Demonstrators demanded the release from prison of Kremlin-critic Alexei Navalny, who has been on a hunger strike for three weeks. The marches swept across dozens of cities.
The main Russian opposition figure, who has been on a 20-day hunger strike, has been moved to an infirmary at another prison, where he will undergo "vitamin therapy," authorities say.
Doctors traveled to the penal colony where Navalny is imprisoned and were arrested outside its gates. Navalny is on a hunger strike to protest a lack of medical care.
After weeks of protests and crackdowns, allies of the opposition figure Alexei Navalny urged Russians to hold up their phones outside for spans of 15 minutes.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview "We don't want to isolate ourselves from global life, but we have to be ready for that. If you want peace then prepare for war,"
NPR's Scott Simon remarks on the sentencing this week of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Putin critic was poisoned last year, recovered in Germany, then arrested for violating parole.
For the second weekend in a row, people across Russia cried out for the release of the jailed Kremlin critic and opposition leader. And again they were met by a massive show of force.
Russian authorities warned of mass arrests as demonstrators marched in open defiance of the Kremlin and called on President Vladimir Putin to free the jailed opposition leader.
Russian authorities detained the country's top opposition leader after he landed in Moscow on a flight from Berlin. Navalny had been gone nearly five months since he was poisoned last August.
The Russian opposition leader posed as a national security agent during a 45-minute phone call to extract information from a spy who was reportedly involved in Navalny's August poisoning.
During his year-end news conference, the Russian president glibly brushed aside international suspicions that Kremlin agents were behind the attempted assassination of the leading opposition figure.
