Protests in Moscow

BBC informs that more than 600 people have been detained over an unauthorized protest in Moscow, amid reports of police violence.

Protesters had gathered in the Russian capital after authorities disqualified a number of opposition candidates from standing in local elections.

The Guardian writes that a number of protesters said they attended Saturday’s demonstration because they were angry about the violence that overtook last week’s protests.

The New York Times writes that the Russian authorities announced they had opened a criminal money-laundering investigation against an anticorruption organization led by Russia’s most prominent opposition activist.

The case against Aleksei A. Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was opened by the Investigative Committee. It involved funding for the anticorruption group’s work of 1 billion rubles (around $15 million) in “money obtained by criminal means.”

The money-laundering case is a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s drive to silence Mr. Navalny, the driving force behind a surge of public dissent in recent weeks, and to snuff out opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin, whose popularity has slumped as Russia’s economy continues to stagnate.

Prepared by Marina Muradyan