Groups of unidentified people removed flowers and other tributes for opposition politician Aleksei Navalny from Russian cities under the watch of the police overnight on February 17, social-media videos showed, as more than 100 people were arrested across Russia for laying flowers in Navalny's memory in various spots, according to monitoring group OVD-Info.
Meanwhile, police blocked access early on February 17 to a memorial in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where several people who had gathered to remember Navalny were arrested. Arrests were made in another Siberian city, Surgut, OVD-Info said.
In Ulyanovsk, people in civilian clothes immediately removed flowers from a memorial and photographed those who brought the bouquets. People from Omsk and Kazan also wrote that monuments in the city had been cordoned off.
OVD-Info said 56 people were taken into custody in various districts of St. Petersburg, where police dispersed a gathering. A photographer with Novaya gazeta and a correspondent for RusNews were among those detained.
SEE ALSO: What Navalny's Death Could Change -- Or NotAnother 15 were arrested in Nizhny Novgorod, and 11 were detained in Moscow, OVD-Info said on its website, where it is keeping a running total that includes the names of the people detained.
Seven other cities --Taganrog, Bryansk, Krasnodar, Tver, Rostov-on-Don, Murmansk, and Belgorod -- reported single-digit detentions, OVD-Info said.
In Moscow, police were on duty at a stone monument on Lubyanka Square to the victims of political repression. According to Kommersant, at least 1,000 people came to the memorial to lay flowers and leave written tributes to Navalny.
A spontaneous memorial also appeared near the house in the Moscow district of Maryino in which Navalny lived before his arrest.
After the news of Navalny’s death was made public, spontaneous memorials also took place in Ulyanovsk, Novosibirsk, and Kirov, according to the news outlet Astra.
People in Tomsk, Kazan, Izhevsk, Pskov, and Perm also came out to mark Navalny’s death.
SEE ALSO: The List Is Long: Russians Who Have Died After Running Afoul Of The KremlinThere was at least one arrest in Minsk. SOTA reports that Dmitry Kuchuk, leader of the liquidated Green party, was detained while trying to lay flowers at a memorial to Navalny outside the Russian Embassy.