Tens of thousands of Russians staged what a monitoring group called the country's biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free
elections to Moscow's city legislature.
Police rounded up scores of people after the demonstration in
Moscow and at another rally in St Petersburg, and detained a leading opposition figure before it began.
The White Counter monitoring group said up to 60,000 people had attended the Moscow rally, describing it as the biggest in
Russia for eight years.