STORY: Footage from Moscow and St Petersburg, Russia's two largest cities, showed police arresting individual demonstrators. One man could be seen briefly holding up a sign before Moscow police ushered him away, bent over, as he groaned in pain.

Another man, who held up a sign in English that read "Free Navalny", was also arrested in Moscow.

OVD-Info said in a statement that 109 people had been detained in 23 cities as of 10.42 pm Moscow time (1942 GMT).

Authorities have clamped down heavily on signs of dissent since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and in most cities, only a handful of people were held.