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Young people were also detained at the protest in St Petersburg
Hundreds of people have been detained at anti-corruption rallies in Moscow and St Petersburg.
Riot police in central Moscow were picking protesters out of the crowd at random, a BBC correspondent at the demonstration has said.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detained at his home ahead of the protests, according to his wife.
Thousands of supporters have heeded his call to take to the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities.
OVD-Info, an independent NGO, told Russian media that 600 people had been detained at the Moscow protest and 300 at the rally in St Petersburg.
Police in Moscow say about 5,000 took part in the demonstration there, Interfax news agency reports.
“Alexei [Navalny] has been arrested in the entrance to our block of flats,” Yuliya Navalnaya wrote on Twitter, ahead of the demonstration.
Mr Navalny, who intends to stand for the Russian presidency next year, had been due to attend the unauthorised rally in central Moscow.
‘Many young plucked from the crowd’ – by BBC’s Sarah Rainsford, central Moscow
This was a peculiar protest.
At first it was hard to tell who was taking part. Tverskaya Street was full of families marking Russia Day with entertainers in historical costumes.
Then thousands of protesters turned up. Huge numbers of riot police were right behind them.
First they announced that the rally was illegal then the arrests began. We saw dozens of people plucked from the crowd – many of them young – and dragged roughly towards police buses.
By calling people to an unauthorised rally, Alexei Navalny knew he was risking a confrontation. The police duly obliged.
But people I spoke to said they knew the risk and still wanted their voices to be heard. Among other things, those voices chanted loudly: “Putin, thief!” and “Russia will be free”.
In a live broadcast by the Russian liberal TV channel, Dozhd, protesters in St Petersburg could be heard shouting “shame” as they were detained by police. Among those arrested was Maxim Reznik, the city’s legislative assembly deputy.
Prominent activist Daniil Ken said he was arrested as he left his home in St Petersburg. He urged people to join the rally at the city’s Champ de Mars square. “Go for me, please!” he tweeted. He has since been released.
Police had earlier detained several people at demonstrations in the cities of Vladivostok, Blagoveshchensk and Kazan.
Mr Navalny was earlier granted permission to hold a rally at Sakharova Avenue but changed the location – without permission – on the eve of the demonstration to Tverskaya Street, near the Kremlin.
The protest was called over government plans to demolish Soviet-era apartment blocks in the city.
BBC