More than 200 detained at Navalny memorials in Russia: Rights group

Flowers and candles laid to honour Putin critic were cleared away from monuments to victims of Soviet-era repression.

Police in Russia have detained more than 200 people across the country at memorials and rallies to honour opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who the authorities say died in a remote penal colony.

On Saturday, the OVD-Info protest monitoring group said at least 212 people had been detained, including 109 in Saint Petersburg and 39 in Moscow, at events on Friday and Saturday.

The federal prison service said that Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died on Friday after a walk at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony where he was serving a 19-year sentence, prompting an outpouring of grief and shock among his supporters across the world and condemnation from world leaders.

As news of his death spread, spontaneous memorials took place in several urban areas, with people taken into custody in 21 cities, according to OVD-Info, which tracks political repression in Russia.

The group reported individual arrests in smaller cities across Russia, from the border city of Belgorod to Vorkuta, an Arctic mining outpost once a centre of the Stalin-era gulag labour camps, to Nizhny Novgorod, Krasnodar, Rostov-on-Don and Tver.