Moscow (CNN) Hundreds of protesters have been arrested by police in the center of Moscow Saturday, in a crackdown on opposition supporters demanding free and fair elections.

Thousands of Russians pledged to attend the protest in the capital Saturday, after Russian authorities banned a number of independent and opposition candidates from taking part in municipal elections in September.

Authorities stated that the candidates were barred from running because they had failed to obtain a sufficient number of signatures to be put on the ballot paper. Opposition politicians and supporters have rejected this allegation.

The decision has sparked a number of protests across Russia this month, including the largest demonstration in recent years last weekend, when 22,000 people took to the streets. Protesters threatened to hold an even larger demonstration Saturday, which was subsequently declared illegal by the authorities.

Protesters take to the streets of Moscow after a number of opposition politicians were barred from running in municipal elections in September.

Hundreds of riot police were witnessed preparing for the protests Saturday morning, and were later seen linking arms to form a line, pushing protesters away from Moscow's City Hall.

OVD-info, a Russian democracy monitoring organization, said that at least 561 people have been detained thus far during the protests.

CNN witnessed clashes between protesters and police, with at least two protesters left with bloodied faces.

Moscow police said that 3,500 people took part in the protests, including 700 journalists and bloggers.

"A significant number of detainees are not residents of Moscow. All detainees are brought to the territorial police units for investigation," the State Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow said in the statement.

A number of arrests and raids were also carried out on opposition candidates in the days and hours leading up to the protest.

Alexei Navalny, Russia's most outspoken opposition figure, was among those detained during the week, and was later sentenced to 30 days in prison for allegedly violating the country's protest laws by calling for the demonstrations Saturday.

Navalny said on Instagram that he was detained as he left his apartment to go on a jog. "People are right when they say that sport is not always good for your health," he quipped. "I have been detained and am now at a police station wearing shorts like a stupid man."

Dmitry Gudkov, a fellow disqualified candidate, was also detained hours before Saturday's protest. He had previously claimed that the country's future was at stake due to the barring of opposition candidates.

"If we lose now, elections will cease to exist as a political instrument," he said. "What we're talking about is whether it's legal to participate in politics today in Russia, we're talking about the country we're going to live in."

Ilya Yashin, an ally of Navalny, reported on Facebook that he had also been detained hours before the demonstration following a raid on his house, and had been taken out of the Russian capital.

Other prominent activists to be detained include Kira Yarmysh, Navalyny's spokeswoman, Lyubov Sobo and Ivan Zhdanov.

Moscow's mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, warned on Twitter that police would react decisively to restore public order.

"According to information from law enforcement authorities, serious provocations are being prepared which pose a threat to the safety, lives and health of people," he said. "Attempts at ultimatums, disorder will not lead to anything good. Order in the city will be maintained." </s> Police officers detain an opposition candidate and lawyer at the Foundation for Fighting Corruption Lyubov Sobol in the center of Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Aug. 3, 2019.

Helmeted police in Moscow rounded up nearly 200 of demonstrators and at least one opposition leader Saturday in an effort to squelch an unauthorized march protesting the exclusion of independent candidates from fall city council elections.

On Pushkin Square, a gathering point not far from the Kremlin where the protest march was to begin, police waded into a scattered crowd standing in light rain and detained dozens.

Officers quickly detained Lyubov Sobol, an opposition figure and one of the candidate hopefuls, as she was heading to the rally. She was taken away in a police van.

At least 194 people were detained, the independent monitoring group OVD-info reported, according to the independent Moscow Times reports. Police said they had detained 30 people

At another square along the planned 2.5-mile protest route along Moscow's Boulevard ring, helmeted riot police linked arms and swept people away.

The protest was livestreamed on Russian independent websites.

Authorities had warned the unauthorized protest march through central Moscow Saturday would bring a strong police response.

The city prosecutor’s office on Friday issued a statement warning that the attempt would be “a direct violation of the law. Law enforcement agencies will be forced to take all necessary measures to curb provocations.”

It was the third Saturday in a row that demonstrators turned out to protest the exclusion of opposition candidates for election to the 45-seat Moscow city council, which is controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia.

Authorities have denied that the opposition-backed candidates were specifically excluded from the ballot, claiming that they failed to garner enough valid signatures. The opposition said the allegations were false.

Sergey Radchenko, a history professor, told Moscow Times city authorities fear Kremlin-backed candidates would lose in big numbers if independents were on the ballot in September.

"Russian regional elections last fall showed that the regime can lose even when it resorts to electoral fraud," he told the newspaper. "If seats are lost to the opposition — first at the local levels, then perhaps even at the national level — the Kremlin will be placed in an untenable situation."

Last week, at an unsanctioned protest outside the Moscow mayor's office, more than 1,000 demonstrators were violently detained by police. An independent organization that monitors arrests put the number of detained at 1,373.

The initial demonstration, which had been officially approved, was held farther out from central Moscow.

Days before last week's demonstration, opposition figure Alexei Navalny was jailed for calling the protest. Also detained in advance were other prominent opposition politicians, including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry G. Gudkov and Ivan Zhdanov.

Navalny, a longtime political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was later taken from jail and hospitalized, prompting fears that he had been poisoned.

Russia's Sklifosovsky toxicology institute said "poisoning substances were not found" in Navalny's samples, according to Russian news agencies. Navalny's personal physician, Anastasia Vasilyeva, blasted the official denying, saying it was "completely absurd" because bedsheets and clothes were not tested, Deutsche Welle reported.

The 43-year-old Navalny has called Putin's United Russia party a place of "crooks and thieves" and has accused the president's system of "sucking the blood out of Russia," the BBC reports.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Moscow protest: Russian police detain about 200, arrest a rally leader </s> MOSCOW (AP) — Police in Moscow have detained a leading opposition figure as she was heading to an unauthorized rally and march protesting the exclusion of independent and opposition candidates from the Moscow city council election.

Lyubov Sobol, who is one of the aspirants rejected from the ballot, was detained Saturday in central Moscow and taken away in a police van.

On Pushkin Square, a gathering point where the protest march was to begin, police waded into a scattered crowd standing in sporadic rain and detained dozens. At another square along the planned protest route, phalanxes of helmeted riot police linked arms and swept people away.

The rally attempt comes a week after police detained nearly 1,400 protesters, beating some of them with truncheons.

Despite repeated warnings that police would take active measures against a protest on Saturday, activists aimed to hold a march for about four kilometers (2.5 miles) along the Boulevard Ring that circles central Moscow and is a popular area to stroll. </s> MOSCOW (AP) — Police in Moscow have detained a leading opposition figure as she was heading to an unauthorized rally protesting the exclusion of independent and opposition candidates from the Moscow city council election.

Lyubov Sobol, who is one of the aspirants rejected from the ballot, was detained Saturday in central Moscow and taken away in a police van.

The rally attempt comes a week after police detained nearly 1,400 protesters, beating some of them with truncheons.

Despite repeated warnings that police would take active measures against a protest on Saturday, activists aim to hold a march for about four kilometers (2.5 miles) along the Boulevard Ring that circles central Moscow and is a popular area to stroll. </s> (MOSCOW) — Police in Moscow cracked down hard on unsanctioned election protests for the second weekend in a row Saturday, detaining more than 800 people at a rally against the exclusion from city council contests of some independent and opposition candidates, an arrest monitoring group said.

Election officials rejected signatures several candidates needed to qualify for next month’s local ballot. The decision tapped dissatisfaction with a political environment dominated by the Kremlin-aligned United Russia party, in which dissenting voices are marginalized, ignored or repressed. The OVD-Info organization, which tracks arrests in Russia, said 828 people were detained Saturday.

The Russian Interior Ministry said the number was about 600 in a crowd of about 1,500 protesters, although police are widely believed to understate crowd estimates for opposition events. The detentions came a week after authorities arrested nearly 1,400 people at a similar protest.

Lyubov Sobol, one of the excluded candidates and a driving figure of the current wave of protests, was among those detained. She was grabbed by police in central Moscow and hustled into a police van, loudly demanding to know why she was being held.

Demonstrators were aiming to hold a march along the Boulevard Ring, which skirts central Moscow and is a popular locale for people to walk around, despite repeated warnings that police would take active measures against a protest. Helmeted riot police lined the route and started seizing demonstrators from a scattered cluster on Pushkin Square and pushing them back from another square further along the route.

Some of the detentions were harsh, including one young bicyclist who was beaten with truncheons as he lay on the pavement still straddling his bike. Some other detainees appeared nonchalant, smirking or checking their phones as police led them to buses.

The demonstrations dissipated after about four hours as a steady, cold rain began falling.

Once a local, low-key affair, the September vote for Moscow’s city council is now emblematic of the division within Russian politics and the Kremlin’s ongoing struggles with how to deal with strongly opposing views in its sprawling capital of 12.6 million people. In the past month, the issue has provoked a surprisingly large outcry for a local election. On July 20, about 20,000 people turned out for a demonstration that was the largest in the city in several years.

On Saturday, about 2,000 people attended another rally in St. Petersburg supporting the Moscow protests, the local news site Fontanka.ru reported.

The Moscow city council, which has 45 seats, is responsible for a large municipal budget and is now controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. All of its seats, which have a five-year-term, are up for grabs in the Sept. 8 vote.

Also Saturday, Russia’s Investigative Committee announced it was opening a criminal case against the Foundation for Fighting Corruption, headed by the Kremlin’s most prominent foe Alexei Navalny. The committee said the organization was suspected of receiving funding that had been criminally acquired.

Navalny is serving 30 days in jail for calling last week’s protest. The head of the foundation also is jail in connection with that protest. </s> MOSCOW: Russian police have detained prominent members of the opposition in Moscow ahead of a planned protest later on Saturday (Jul 27) which the authorities have declared illegal and warned could become violent.

The demonstration, due to be held outside the Moscow mayor's office from 11am GMT, is designed to protest against what the opposition says is the unfair exclusion of a raft of opposition-minded candidates from a Sept 8 local election in Moscow.

The authorities say the candidates were barred from running because they had failed to collect a sufficient number of genuine signatures in their support, an allegation the opposition rejects as false.

Although the election to select members of Moscow city's parliament is not a national one, opposition activists view it as an opportunity to try to gain a foothold in the Russian capital where Kremlin-backed candidates have proved less popular in the past than in other parts of the country.

Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was jailed for 30 days on Wednesday ahead of Saturday's protest and other members of the opposition have previously had their homes searched.

Ilya Yashin, a Navalny ally, said on Facebook on Saturday that police had searched his Moscow flat overnight before detaining him and driving him out of the Russian capital.

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny's spokeswoman, said on Twitter she and another activist had been detained on Saturday morning. Other activists had their homes searched.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin warned on social media that the authorities would act decisively to guarantee public order.

"According to information from law enforcement authorities serious provocations are being prepared which pose a threat to the safety, lives and health of people," Sobyanin said in a statement.

"Attempts at ultimatums, disorder will not lead to anything good. Order in the city will be maintained."

Reuters reporters said there was a heavy police presence in central Moscow ahead of the protest with groups of ununiformed athletic-looking young men accompanying police.

Russia's Investigative Committee has already opened a criminal investigation into an opposition rally in June which it said may have obstructed the work of Moscow's electoral commission.

A protest in Moscow last weekend calling for the disbarred candidates to be registered was attended by more than 20,000 people, according to a monitor. </s> People with national flags and various political parties flags gather during a protest in Moscow, Russia, Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019. Masses of people gathered in central Moscow to demand that opposition candidates be included on ballots for an upcoming city parliament election in September. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

MOSCOW (AP) — Tens of thousands of people rallied Saturday against the exclusion of some city council candidates from Moscow’s upcoming election, turning out for one of the Russian capital’s biggest political protests in years.

After the rally, which was officially sanctioned, hundreds of participants streamed to an area near the presidential administration building to continue with an unauthorized demonstration. They were confronted by phalanxes of riot police and the arrest-monitoring group OVD-Info said 136 people were detained.

The rally was the fourth consecutive weekend demonstration in Moscow over the local election. The determined opposition has prompted protests in other cities, reflecting widespread frustration with Russia’s tightly controlled politics.

The protest attracted some 50,000 people, said Beliy Schetchik, an organization that counts public meeting attendance.

OVD-Info also said 86 people were arrested Saturday in St. Petersburg at an unsanctioned demonstration in support of the Moscow protests.

Unlike the previous two Moscow rallies, where police harshly dispersed the crowds and detained thousands of demonstrators, Saturday’s gathering in a neighborhood with relatively few passers-by was officially sanctioned.

It was held on a street flanked by high buildings and sandwiched between two busy thoroughfares.

Lyubov Sobol, one of the city council candidates denied a place on the ballot and a spearhead of the election protest, was among those detained in Moscow on Saturday.

A video on Sobol’s Twitter feed showed officers breaking into her office as she demanded an explanation from them.

Small related protests also were reported in several Siberian cities on Saturday. </s> Opposition activists gathered for protest “walks” through central Moscow on Saturday, objecting to some candidates being excluded from the upcoming council election. Police have detained 600 people at the unsanctioned gathering.

One of the first to be detained was Lyubov Sobol, a rejected candidate herself and an ally of opposition figure Aleksey Navalny. The lawyer turned anti-corruption activist had been warned by city authorities against calls for more unsanctioned rallies after she dodged arrest following last Saturday’s gathering which ended up in clashes and mass detentions. Last week, she got away with a fine as a mother of an underage kid.

The rejected candidates have been accused of voter fraud, allegedly “farming” the hundreds of signatures they needed to break through the eligibility barrier. They are appealing the decision, while using protests as a pressure campaign.

Instead of gathering in one place, activists on Saturday chose to walk through Moscow’s iconic 9km-long string of boulevards and squares around the capital’s historical center. Several hundred showed up initially, with rainy weather and the outcome of the July 27 rally – which saw more than a thousand people detained – probably discouraging others.

Москва. "прогулка по бульварам" сейчас так pic.twitter.com/4z3UMQBLBA — Ольга Король (@kor_olka) August 3, 2019

The exact number of protesters, spread across the boulevards, was hard to estimate, but it was a far cry from the 21,000 marked as “going” or “interested” on the event’s Facebook page. Navalny’s team had used the number when promoting the event. The Russian Interior Ministry said some 1,500 took part in the rally.

Protesters were met with heavy police presence in areas of their planned route, with officers warning them through loudspeakers not to take part in illegal gatherings.

Many local businesses have chosen to stay shut, heeding a warning by municipal authorities that if clashes between protesters and police erupt, it could lead to damages and would be unsafe for customers.

Moscow police said on Saturday evening they have detained some 600 people. Several journalists have complained they were caught up in the arrests. Among them was Dutch reporter Joost Bosman, who tweeted a picture of himself in a police truck.

The request to hold demonstrations this Saturday was rejected earlier this week, with authorities saying the application was submitted too late to negotiate a location that both the city authorities and the organizers would agree upon. Meanwhile, at least three separate rallies have been sanctioned for August 10 and 11. The protest organizers have said they are still in talks with authorities over the details of the gatherings.

Also on rt.com Over 1,000 detained at unsanctioned Moscow rally after clashes & attempts to block roads (VIDEO)

Opposition forces in Russia seem to have been energized by the outcome of last week’s unsanctioned protest, which led to a stand-off with police, where a large number of protesters were detained. A handful of demonstrators have been charged with crimes like attacking the police or bringing melee weapons to a public gathering.

The opposition said the police action last week was disproportionately harsh and unjustified, and called for doubling down the pressure. Several of the candidates who called for protests have been slapped with detentions ranging from 10 to 30 days for breaking Russia’s rules on how mass gatherings can be held.

Also on rt.com Samples taken from Kremlin critic Navalny show no signs of poison – doctors

Whether the opposition's sentiment about last Saturday is shared by the general population in Russia is a different issue altogether. An opinion poll by VTSIOM conducted after the previous rally showed that 61 percent of Muscovites agreed that the police can use “harsh measures” in response to an unsanctioned gathering as long as they stay within the confines of the law. The poll was called a poor indicator of the public mood by supporters of the protest, since they consider the police action illegal.

The divided attitude to the wave of protests is reflected in what Russian public figures have said about it. A number of celebrities voiced their support, saying the authorities did go too far in their response to last Saturday’s protests. Others warned opposition activists against putting their trust in leaders, who are encouraging them to break the law just for the sake of escalation.

Think your friends would be interested? Share this story! </s> More than 500 protesters, including prominent activists, were detained Saturday near the Moscow mayor's office as Russian police jostled with demonstrators demanding that opposition-backed candidates be allowed to run for city council elections.

Opposition figure Alexei Navalny was jailed Wednesday for calling the protest, which police deemed illegal. A similar protest last weekend at a location farther from the center of Moscow had been officially approved.

Also detained in advance were other prominent opposition politicians, including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry G. Gudkov and Ivan Zhdanov, depriving those who turned up of any leadership.

Moscow's Mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, had called the demonstration a "security threat," and promised to maintain public order, the BBC reported.

The crowd appeared to number several thousand people, but there was no official estimate of its size.

OVD-Info, an organization that monitors political arrests, said 520 people had been detained about an hour after the protest began, while the city police department put the number at 295, according to state news agency TASS.

As the demonstration got underway, lines of helmeted riot police tried to push back the protesters, some of whom resisted physically. Demonstrators shouted slogans including “Russia will be free!”

Authorities have denied the opposition-backed candidates from appearing on the Sept. 8 ballot, claiming that they failed to garner enough valid signatures. The opposition said the allegations were false.

The 45-seat Moscow city council is controlled by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

The street in front of city hall was blocked by riot police and members of the National Guard, according to The Moscow Times. Some protesters, driven into nearby streets, tore down some police barriers, the newspaper said.

Navalny's video studio, which had been sending a live webcast of the protest via YouTube, was shut down by helmeted police who forced their way into the room.

The Dozhd television channel, an independent operation also known as TV Rain, streamed a live video of the events.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Moscow protests: Hundreds detained in demonstration over election
Several hundred people are detained by Russian police at unauthorized protests in Moscow. The protests occurred because several opposition candidates were disqualified from running in the upcoming Moscow City legislative election.