More than 4,800 held as Russian police clamp down on protests

Police detained more than 4,800 people across Russia and blocked off the center of Moscow on Jan. 31in a massive clampdown on protests demanding the release of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

Thousands of protesters defied government warnings to rally from Vladivostok to Saint Petersburg in a second weekend of mass demonstrations over the arrest of President Vladimir Putin's most prominent opponent.

Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport in mid-January after flying back to Russia from Germany where he was recovering from an August poisoning he blames on the Kremlin.

The 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner is being held in a Moscow detention center and faces years of potential jail time in several different criminal cases, despite calls from Western governments for his release.

In moves not seen for years in Moscow, authorities locked down the center of the capital on Jan. 31, with hundreds of police lining the streets, central Metro stations closed and restrictions on the movements of pedestrians.

Protesters who had hoped to gather outside the headquarters of the FSB security service were instead scattered to various parts of the city as organizers made last-minute changes in locations.

AFP journalists saw dozens of protesters detained and taken into police vans.

Several thousand were seen marching throughout the city center, but it was unclear amid the chaos how many people took part in the demonstration.

Independent monitor OVD-Info said at least 4,818 people had been detained across the country, after reporting more than 4,000 detentions during similar protests on January 23.

It said at least 1,365 were detained in Moscow and 962 in Saint Petersburg, as well as 82 journalists across...