Moscow: Russian riot police Wednesday arrested top opposition leaders and hundreds of activists who were seeking to stage a protest rally against alleged ballot rigging in favour of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin`s ruling party during the parliament election.
The authorities have deployed thousands of riot police and interior troops in the capital in the wake of last night`s mass rally and demonstration against Prime Minister Putin, whose United Russia won 238 seats in the 450-seat State Duma in Sunday`s polls, down sharply from the 315 seats it won in the last polls in 2007.
Ex-vice premier in Boris Yeltsin cabinet, Boris Nemtsov and chief of the local chapter of liberal `Yabloko` party Sergei Mitrokhin have been arrested in down-town Moscow, while attempting to stage protest rally against alleged ballot rigging at Sunday`s Duma polls.
ITAR-TASS news agency said Nemtsov, Mitrokhin and others were arrested while trying to enter a `sanctioned` rally of five thousand pro-Kremlin `Young Guard` youth group.
Opposition supporters shouted "Shame on you fascists!" and "Russia without Putin" in a tense stand-off with hundreds of pro-Kremlin youth who descended on the site in advance.
There is a total black out of the opposition rallies on the state-controlled TV channels and the liberal websites remain the only source of information.
However, the government-run RIA Novosti on its English wire portal showed live webcast of events on the Triumfalnaya Square (former Mayakovsky Square), the favourite place for anti-Kremlin opposition.
President Dmitry Medvedev and the Russian Foreign Ministry have reacted angrily at the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton`s criticism of the Duma polls.
She said they were `neither free nor fair`.
PTI