Police in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk have detained eight people who laid flowers at a monument to victims of political repression on what would have been Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s 49th birthday on Wednesday.
Video shared by the Telegram news channel RusNews showed club-wielding police officers detaining those gathered at the square where the monument is located.
“I’ll walk on my own, just don’t hit me,” one woman was heard telling the officers.
RusNews identified those detained as former independent city councilwoman Svetlana Kaverzina, six activists and its own correspondent Sergei Volkov.
Activist Dmitry Sayakhov, reportedly experienced a sudden and severe spike in blood pressure inside a police van where all those detained were placed.
“[He] is having a seizure; he can’t sit or walk. I’m worried about my friend,” an activist told RusNews. Video from inside the van showed Sayakhov lying motionless on a seat.
Elsewhere in Russia, St. Petersburg media reported a police presence near the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to victims of political repression.
The local news outlet Bumaga reported that police officers took photographs of the passports of those who came to pay tribute to Navalny and detained RusNews correspondent Elina Kozich, who was photographing the tribute.
In the southern city of Saratov later on Wednesday, police violently detained an opposition activist and member of the liberal Yabloko party at a monument where residents had laid flowers in honor of Navalny. “Sergei Gendin, spokesman for Yabloko’s Saratov branch, was detained for an unknown reason today,” the local party branch wrote on Telegram without mentioning the flower tributes to Navalny. It attached photos of the activist kneeling as he was being handcuffed and carried away by two police officers.
Near Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) headquarters in Moscow, RusNews said riot police photographed the passport of one of its readers who laid flowers at the city’s Solovetsky Stone and asked to inspect his backpack for “prohibited” items like protest signs.
Other flower tributes to Navalny were also reported at monuments in southwestern Russia’s Voronezh region, northwestern Russia’s republic of Karelia and southern Siberia’s Altai region.
Many of Navalny’s closest allies have fled Russia to avoid criminal prosecution after Russian authorities designated his activist network as “extremist” in 2021.
More than 100 people were detained across Russia in February 2024 after they laid flowers in memory of Navalny the day after news spread of his sudden death in an Arctic penal colony, where he had been serving a 19-year sentence on “extremism” charges.
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