Tens of thousands of people turned up across Russia for a second consecutive weekend rally on Sunday in support of a captured opposition leader, Alexei A. Navalny. But wherever the protesters went, the police did the same and met them in sometimes brutal clashes.
The protests began in the Far East of Russia and spread across the large country, although crowds in some cities seemed smaller than last weekend. Thousands of protesters turned up in St. Petersburg, the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains, Novosibirsk in Siberia, Moscow and elsewhere. More than 4,000 people were detained.
Even before the Russians gathered, the Kremlin made it clear that police officers would be in large numbers. Officers mostly responded with arrests. But early Sunday afternoon, reports of police brutality against protesters surfaced in several cities – including the possible use of electric shock devices on protesters and the beatings of others.
More than 1,200 protesters were detained in Moscow, reports the OVD-Info activist group. Police subway stations closed and paralyzed much of the city center as they scrambled to prevent protesters in one place meet.
The display of power – and the Kremlin fear – in Moscow was different from what has been seen in recent years. “Everything for one and one for all!” a column of protesters, numbering in the thousands, rumbled as they marched through the city to the jail where Mr. Navalny was detained.
Protesters scattered across the northern part of central Moscow played an hour-long cat and mouse with riot police in armor and camouflage. Using Twitter and Telegram, the supporters of Mr. Navalny protesters headed further north in the direction of the city’s main train station, and they sent columns of police pickups in that direction.
The arrest of mr. Navalny has given a new focus to the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin, which has remained diverse even as its popularity has declined.
Protesters, young and old, came out in the capital. Among them was Lyudmila Mikhailovna, an 83-year-old retired pediatrician who did not want to name her. She said she was no big fan of Mr. Navalny was not. But she watched his video about a palace on the Black Sea that he said for Mr. Putin and decided to join the protest because “I’m honest, nothing else.”
Mr Navalny’s return to Russia on January 17 has shifted the Kremlin’s political landscape – both at home and abroad. Within the country, Russians who are unhappy with their president suddenly have a clear leader around whom to rally.
The call of Navalny’s case for those who do not share his political views is that he is seen as a symbol of the main source of anger that many Russians feel towards the Kremlin: injustice.
The authorities have made it clear that a strong police response is coming. In recent days, Mr. Navalny’s brother, Oleg Navalny, and Maria Alyokhina, of the punk group Pussy Riot, were placed under house arrest. Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was among those detained on Sunday.
Navalny’s allies were not deterred by police presence on Sunday and called for more protests on Tuesday when Navalny appeared at a court hearing on alleged parole violations related to a six-year-old embezzlement case that could send him to jail. for many years.