Russian police detained about 200 regional lawmakers at a forum in Moscow organized by opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s Open Russia organization.
The police said in a statement that the detention was due to the event being held in violation of sanitary and epidemiological requirements and that a significant number of participants didn’t have personal protective equipment.
The detention of municipal deputies follows protests earlier this year in Russia in support of prominent opposition figure Alexey Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator whose exposés have targeted President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. Khodorkovsky, a businessman who spent almost a decade in prison in Russia on politically motivated Kremlin charges, now lives in London.
Read More: Putin, Poison and the Importance of Alexey Navalny: QuickTake
“The Russian authorities are crushing opposition activity,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. There are oppositionists among municipal deputies, he said.