Penza, 5 May 2018. PenzaNews. According to preliminary data, the police arrested at least six participants of an illegal protest in Penza, which was held in the afternoon on Saturday, May 5. Several witnesses reported this to PenzaNews.

Photo: Evgenij Malyshev

According to them, the detention began after some of those who walked in the column in the central pedestrian street of Penza started to shout out the slogans "He is not our king!" and "Russia will be free".

At the same time, as it was noted by agency interlocutors, the law enforcement officers did not use riot control weapons to the detainees, the protesters were rather quiet and did not unroll banners or flags throughout the journey.

The end point of the demonstrators, who began their movement at the shopping centre Vysshaya Liga, was the Dzerzhinsky public garden, where four prisoner vans had emerged before the start of the campaign. A short rally was held in the public garden, where everyone was invited to speak.

At the end of it about 30 people - mostly young ones - went to the building of the Penza department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where several detainees including Ivan Finogeev, leader of the left-wing youth organization Modern Age Generation, and activist Pavel Barabanshchikov, had been brought.

People were standing near the entrance chanting "Freedom!", and "Let them go!"

At some point, a minibus with the detainees tried to leave the fenced territory but the protesters did not let it drive past.
Commenting on the incident the press service of the regional MIA department failed to immediately provide a comment about the illegal protest as well as to specify the number of detainees.

According to available information, to date Ivan Finogeev and Pavel Barabanshchikov have been released from the police station, administrative protocols against them have been drawn up.

There is also information that ex-activist of the Left Front movement Albert Gerasimov detained by the police was taken to the Lenisnky district court of Penza.

On May 5 – fiv days before the inauguration – opposition activist Alexei Navalny organized protests under the slogan "He is not our king".

They were not endorsed by authorities of many cities including Moscow and Saint-Petersburg.

As a result, according to media reports, the police detained over 1,000 people altogether with about 500 of them in the capital.

During the day information on arrests of the protesters came from Chelyabinsk, Yakutsk, Tolyatti, Samara, Voronezh, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Novokuznetsk, Barnaul, Kaluga and other cities.