Russian police rounded up more than 1,000 people in Moscow today, July 27 in one of the biggest crackdowns of recent times against an increasingly defiant opposition decrying President Vladimir Putin’s tight grip on power.

The arrest and detentions came following a protest to demand that opposition members be allowed to run in a local election. Authorities had declared it illegal and sought to block participation, but several thousand people turned up in one of the longest and most determined protests of recent years.

Chants of “Russia without Putin” and “Putin resign” echoed through central Moscow as guardsmen clad in riot gear beat back protesters with batons and roughly detained people.

At least one woman and a man appeared to have suffered serious head wounds.

Today’s events showed how activists and especially younger people remain intent on pressing to open Russia’s tightly-choreographed political system to competition.

Jailed opposition leader, Alexei Navalny had called the protest to persuade officials to allow opposition-minded candidates to run in a September 8 election. But authorities said that they were barred because they failed to collect sufficient genuine signatures in their support.

The opposition has no seats in parliament and is starved of air time on state TV where many Russians still get their news.

Opinion polls in the past have shown support for Navalny, a lawyer and anti-corruption activist, only in the single digits. But backers note he won almost a third of the vote in a 2013 Moscow mayoral race and say his movement could build momentum in the Russian capital if allowed to compete fairly.

Though Putin’s approval rating is still high at well over 60 percent, it is lower than it used to be due to discontent over years of falling incomes. Last year, the 66-year-old former KGB intelligence officer won a landslide re-election and a new six-year term until 2024.

Ireland has cautioned the new British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson against going on a collision course with the European Union over the issue of Brexit. It warned against preventing an orderly exit with a deal.

Such biting criticism from Ireland, just two days since Johnson took office with a pledge to strike a new divorce deal with the EU, indicates the perils of the Brexit gambit chosen by Britain’s new government.

On entering Downing Street on Wednesday, Johnson cautioned that if the EU refused to negotiate then he would take Britain out on October 31 without a deal, a step that would send shock waves through the world economy.

In an indication of business concerns about a disorderly exit from the EU, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders said that a no-deal Brexit was an existential threat to the British car industry and would risk output.

Johnson spiced his pitch to the EU on Thursday by bluntly stating that one of the most hotly contested elements of the Brexit divorce agreement – the Irish border backstop – would have to be struck out if there was to be an orderly exit.

However, Ireland’s second most powerful politician, Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, said that Prime Minister Johnson’s comments were “very unhelpful” and warned that the new British leader is not going to get a deal with such an approach.

“He seems to have made a deliberate decision to set Britain on a collision course with the European Union and with Ireland in relation to the Brexit negotiations,” Coveney told reporters in Belfast after meeting Julian Smith, Britain’s Northern Ireland minister.

Smith later said he did not think a collision was looming.

“We need to find solutions particularly for the issue of the border, but the prime minister was very, very clear to his cabinet yesterday that he wants to get a deal done,” he said.

Further illustrating the delicate issues at stake, Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that a British EU exit without a deal would raise the question of planning for a possible future unification of Ireland and Northern Ireland.

Source: Reuters.