Mayor calls Moscow protest ‘dangerous provocation’

MOSCOW — Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Tuesday called anti-corruption protests that brought thousands of people onto the streets of the Russian capital “a dangerous provocation,” Interfax news agency reported.

Baton-wielding riot police broke up Monday’s protests and detained hundreds of demonstrators in Moscow and other Russian cities.

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who called the protests, was arrested and swiftly sentenced to a prison term.

The protests were some of the biggest in Russia since 2012.

“The unpermitted action in the center of Moscow on June 12 was a vile and dangerous provocation. It is a miracle that nobody was injured,” Sobyanin said.

Moscow authorities had initially authorized a venue for the protest away from the city center. But Navalny switched it to Tverskaya Street, Moscow’s main avenue near the Kremlin. The General Prosecutor’s Office had warned that a protest there would be illegal.

“The police and the OMON (riot police) acted in a professional and proper way,” Sobyanin said. “If the law enforcement had acted in a different way, this could have led to unpredictable consequences.”

A top German Foreign Ministry official on Tuesday criticized the arrest of demonstrators and said Berlin expected them to be released swiftly.

“They were exercising their fundamental rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly, which are enshrined in the Russian constitution,” British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said.