'Crooks and thieves' protests resonate with Russia's youth

Navalny, who had a green liquid thrown in his face in April, robbing him of some of his sight, said hundreds of people had attended demonstrations in Russia's Far East on Monday morning.

Officially, the demonstrations are against corruption, but they are also an effort by Navalny to force the Kremlin to let him run against Putin in the March 2018 presidential election, even if he has virtually zero chance of unseating the president.

The demonstrators appeared to be mostly young people - those who were born or grew up during Putin's 17 years of leading Russian Federation.

Riot police in St. Petersburg have begun detaining demonstrators in an unsanctioned opposition rally in the centre of the city.

Information appeared on the Internet that unknown persons were collecting personal data - personal pension account numbers - from those who went to Sakharov Avenue, (they were in a minority).

Navalny said the decision to move the protest came after his organisation failed to find any companies willing to set up stages, sound systems and other crucial elements for a political rally in the area of the city allotted by officials.

Moscow authorities had agreed to a location for a protest rally in the capital, but Navalny at the last minute called changing it to one of Moscow's main thoroughfares, citing interference in building a stage at the agreed-upon rally site. Monday's protest was planned to coincide with the national holiday for the Russian federation, as protestors met with the ordinary crowd celebrating the holiday and Russia Day Events in the streets.

Yulia, the wife of Alexei Navalny, said Monday that he was arrested outside his home en route to the centerpiece demonstration on the Tverskaya Street.

"There are people walking around the streets in World War I uniforms", Mary Louise says.

Thousands turned out to voice dissatisfaction with the government on Monday, the latest in a series of demonstrations to engulf Russian Federation this year. State news agency TASS confirmed Nalvany's arrest on Monday, but later claimed that the protests were in fact festive Russia Day celebrations.

Moscow city hall labeled the change in the protest site a provocation and said that demonstrations would be viewed as a threat to public order, leading to the detentions.

The group said 825 people were detained during protests in the capital and 548 arrested in St. Petersburg. The Guardian described crowds of "mainly young protesters" chanting anti-Putin slogans.

He is the best known opposition politician in Russian Federation and he has made a name for himself by documenting - and exposing - corruption at the highest levels of Mr Putin's administration.

Many protesters held Russian flags and some chanted, "I love Russia!" as squads of riot police dragged them off to waiting police vans.

The protests in March took place in scores of cities across the country, the largest show of discontent in years.

Young protesters flocked to the rallies following calls from opposition leader Aleksei Navalny for students to take charge at the anti-government demonstrations. "Corruption is stealing our future", read one placard next to an image of a yellow duck, a reference to a duck house which Navalny said Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev owned on a vast country estate, an allegation Medvedev says is "nonsense."Reuters witnesses saw more than 100 people arrested in central Moscow". Dozens more were detained across Russian Federation in cities such as Vladivostok in the far east and Novosibirsk in Siberia.

Russia Day is dedicated to the 1990 declaration of sovereignty.

Russian opposition leader is seen getting into a police vehicle as he was detained in front of his home on Monday.

That same realization motivated Sergei Boyko, the head of Navalny's Novosibirsk office, to put his IT career on hold and get into politics.