Hundreds held in Russia as country mourns death of Putin foe Navalny
More than 400 people have been detained in Russia while paying tribute to opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died at a remote Arctic prison colony, a prominent rights group has reported.
The sudden death of Mr Navalny, 47, was a crushing blow to many Russians, who had pinned their hopes for the future on President Vladimir Putin's fiercest foe.
Mr Navalny remained vocal in his unrelenting criticism of the Kremlin even after surviving a nerve agent poisoning and receiving multiple prison terms.
The news reverberated across the globe, with many world leaders blaming the death on Mr Putin and his government.
In an exchange with reporters shortly after a church service on Saturday, US President Joe Biden reiterated his stance that Mr Putin is ultimately to blame for Mr Navalny's death.
Mr Biden said: "The fact of the matter is, Putin is responsible. Whether he ordered it, he's responsible for the circumstance. It's a reflection of who he is. It cannot be tolerated."
Meanwhile, Mr Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, published a picture of the couple on Instagram yesterday in her first social media post since his death. The caption read simply: "I love you."
Hundreds of people in dozens of Russian cities have streamed to ad-hoc memorials and monuments to victims of political repressions with flowers and candles to pay tribute to the politician.
In more than a dozen cities, police had detained 401 people by Saturday night, according to the OVD-INFO rights group that tracks political arrests and provides legal aid.
More than 200 arrests were made in St Petersburg, Russia's second largest city, the group said.
Among those detained there was Grigory Mikhnov-voitenko, a priest of the Apostolic Orthodox Church - a religious group independent of the Russian Orthodox Church - who announced plans on social media to hold a memorial service for Mr Navalny and was arrested on Saturday morning outside his home.
He was charged with organising a rally and placed in a police holding cell, but was later taken to hospital after suffering a stroke, OVDINFO reported.
Courts in St Petersburg have ordered 42 of those detained on Friday to serve from one to six days in jail, while nine others were fined, court officials said.
In Moscow, at least six people were ordered to serve 15 days in jail, according to OVD-INFO. One person was also jailed in the southern city of Krasnodar and two more in the city of Bryansk, the group said. The news of Mr Navalny's death came a month before a presidential election in Russia that is widely expected to give Mr Putin another six years in power. Questions about the cause of death lingered yesterday, and it remained unclear when the authorities would release his body to his family.
Mr Navalny's team said on Saturday that the politician was "murdered" and accused the authorities of deliberately stalling the release of the body, with his mother and lawyers getting contradicting information from various institutions where they went in their quest to retrieve the body.