Russian police detain 260 at anti-Putin protest

MOSCOW: Russian police said they detained more than 260 activists in central Moscow on Sunday for holding an unauthorised protest against President Vladimir Putin.

The demonstration took place after radical opposition politician Vyacheslav Maltsev appealed on his website for supporters to hold protests across the country, calling for a "people´s revolution" to end Putin´s rule.

"For breaches of public order in central Moscow, 263 people have been detained. They have all been taken to local police stations," Moscow police said in a statement.

Many of those detained were carrying knives, knuckledusters and pistols that can fire rubber bullets, TASS state news agency reported.

An AFP photographer said police, some in helmets and bullet-proof vests, picked up the protesters one by one in central Moscow close to the Kremlin.

A reporter for popular Echo of Moscow radio station, Andrei Yezhov, wrote on Twitter that was detained, but he was later released without charge.

OVD-Info, a rights activist group that monitors political detentions, said that 286 people were detained in Moscow and 24 in six other cities.

The detentions come after police in Moscow on Saturday also detained dozens of people at an authorised nationalist anti-Kremlin march on a public holiday known as the Day of National Unity.

In recent months, opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who wants to stand against Putin in polls next year, has also called on his supporters to hold unauthorised protests, resulting in large numbers of arrests.

In June, more than 1,500 Navalny supporters were detained during a day of demonstrations across the nation. Thousands previously turned out in March for the biggest protests in years against the Kremlin, with police saying around 500 people were detained in Moscow.