Anti-Putin rally ends with violence

Police cracked down on an anti-Putin rally in Moscow on Sunday, making arrests after hundreds of demonstrators broke through their lines in a bid to take their protest to the Kremlin walls, RIA Novosti reports.

Police said a number of officers were injured by protesters armed with bottles and stones. A number of police helmets floated in the Moskva river after being torn from officers.

Protest leader Sergey Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front movement, was among those detained. Well-known blogger and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was also arrested.

Violence flared after Udaltsov led a mass sit-in and demanded to be allowed to march directly to the Kremlin and for President-elect Vladimir Putin’s victory at the disputed March 4 presidential polls to be annulled.

Opposition figures and RIA Novosti correspondents at the scene estimated a crowd of around 50,000. Udaltsov said in a Twitter post that there were “no less than 100,000” at the rally.