Thousands of police officers and OMON special forces were deployed from throughout Russia to disperse the March of Dissent rallies held in Moscow on April 14 and St. Petersburg on March 15.
In Moscow, 9,000 police and OMON troops were present -- outnumbering by far the estimated 2,000 protesters who turned out.
Police said that in St. Petersburg 120 protesters were detained and in Moscow, around 170 people. Most of those detained paid small fines and were subsequently released.
Protesters Speak Out
One of the Moscow protesters, Ramil Sadykhov, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that he and his fellow detainees felt constantly under threat while in police custody.
"While I was detained I was sitting next to a man who told me he’d just gone to buy a theater ticket. He said he had nothing to do with the rally," Sadykhov said.
"But they’d arrested him and thrown him onto a bus. They didn’t tell him anything, they just said something like: 'You’d better sit quietly or you know what’s coming.' There was a constant display of violence in the police station."
Sergei Gulyaev, who participated in the St. Petersburg March of Dissent rally, said the OMON forces made it clear early on that the protests would not go off unchallenged.
"On Pioneers' Square, where we had wanted to convene, there were a whole load of OMON from Tverskoi Oblast. They spent a whole day and night there, sleeping on their buses," Gulyaev said.
"The following day they were ready for the protesters. They prevented them from getting through so that they couldn’t gather in any sort of numbers."
One of those detained was former chess champion Garry Kasparov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition movement. He told Reuters on April 15 that the government's reaction was quite harsh.
"People should recognize that further actions may end up with even more government crackdowns. But I have no doubt that the street protests will continue and the protest will rise because people recognize there is no other way out," Kasparov said.
Complaints
Opposition leaders have warned that harsh police tactics will turn people against Putin's regime.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko today ordered law enforcement organs to "thoroughly" verify complaints of beatings and rights violations during the protests. She said measures must be taken to curb these violations if the complaints are confirmed.
EU Concern
European Union officials today voiced concern over the police response to the rallies.
EU spokeswoman Christiane Hohmann said foreign ministers would raise the issue at talks with their Russian counterparts in Luxembourg next week.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko today ordered law-enforcement organs to "thoroughly" verify reports of police abuse during the St. Petersburg rally.
Russia's human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, said he was willing to look into complaints filed by demonstrators.
He said his impression from watching television reports was that some law-enforcement officials had "seriously" exceeded their authority.
The protests came after comments last week from London-based Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky, in which he said he is plotting to use "undemocratic" means to overthrow the regime of President Vladimir Putin.
And last week, Russia rejected U.S. criticism of its rights record. Russian lawmakers passed a resolution rejecting as "unacceptable" the recent negative assessments of Russian human-rights standards in a U.S. State Department report. The lawmakers also accused the United States of meddling in upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections.
Little Television Coverage
Most Russians, with the exception of those that witnessed the protests, will know little about this weekend's events.
State-controlled television channels showed only brief pictures of the protests.
What Russian viewers got instead was footage of Putin meeting film star Jean-Claude Van Damme and Italy's former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi.
The men were in St. Petersburg to watch a martial-arts spectacle, titled "Russia versus America."
As one Russian fighter knocked out an American fighter -- in a mixed fighting style known as "boi bez pravil," or fight without rules -- cameras showed President Putin nodding in approval.
