MOSCOW (AP) — Several thousand people have protested in Moscow against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party, which won the largest share of a parliamentary election that observers said was rigged.
It was perhaps the largest opposition rally in years and ended with police detaining some of the activists.
A group of several hundred then marched toward the Central Elections Commission near the Kremlin, but were stopped by riot police and taken away in buses.
Estimates of the number of protesters Monday night ranged from 5,000 to 10,000. They chanted “Russia without Putin.”
Putin’s United Russia party took about 50 percent of Sunday’s vote, a result that opposition politicians and election monitors said was inflated because of ballot stuffing and other vote fraud.
