The number of arrests will increase in the coming hours due to the various appeals made for this afternoon, says the civil rights organization OVD-Info
The madness was unleashed this Wednesday in Russia, after President Vladimir Putin’s speech in which he decreed a partial mobilization of 300,000 reservists – although according to the Ministry of Defense, a total of 25 million Russians can be mobilized to join the ranks of the Army in the east and south of Ukraine–. The call has generated a massive stampede of citizens who buy plane tickets and desperately flee the country.
But not only that, various civil organizations have promoted a series of demonstrations on public roads to protest the war in Ukraine and the president’s recent announcement. Some mobilizations that are “illegal”, warns the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office. Despite the harsh regulations, citizens no longer want to remain silent and have taken to the streets to protest. At the moment, the authorities have already arrested almost a hundred people.
The civil rights defense organization OVD-Info has begun its own count of the demonstrations and has been able to confirm at least 97 arrests, although they affirm that the number will increase in the coming hours due to the various appeals made for this afternoon. Several accounts linked to the opposition, including those of the imprisoned leader Alexéi Navalni, have released videos of the first citizen protests over the mobilization of reservists.
“On the internet, including social networks, information has been published calling for participation in public actions in Moscow and the commission of illegal acts,” the Prosecutor’s Office explained in a statement. And these mobilizations, he affirms, have not been coordinated with the relevant authorities, so they could be classified as an administrative infraction for the “violation of the established procedure to organize or hold a meeting, demonstration, march or picket.”
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