AFP

MOSCOW

MOSCOW police detained 23 people on Wednesday breaking up an eight-day occupy protest that sprung up on a scenic square following strong man Vladimir Putin’s swearing in for a third Kremlin term.

Some of the activists immediately moved to another central Moscow location to continue a sit-in the likes of which have not been seen in Russia since ex-KGB spy Putin’s political domination began in 1999.

“They put up no resistance.

Everything passed fairly peacefully,” deputy district police chief Yury Zdorenko said in televised comments. “Everything happened in accordance with the spirit of the law.” One of the detained activists told Moscow Echo radio that police had released everyone without pressing charges after issuing official warnings.

The small but daring protest tested the limits to which the ruling elite was willing to put up with a form of dissent now popular in much of the West.

The rallies swelled to a few thousand as people finished work but shrank to just a few dozen activists overnight. But they comprised the many facets of an untested protest movement that arose in the wake of disputed parliamentary polls in December and is now looking for energy with Putin’s controversial mandate officially underway.

The sit-in referred to itself as ‘Occupy Abay’ a reference to a large statue of 19th century Kazakh poet Abay Kunanbayuli round which protesters gathered in a leafy boulevard in the upscale Chistye Prudy district.

Its mostly younger supporters tried to get round the city’s strict and at times arbitrarily enforced rules on holding protests by calling their action a mass public “stroll”.

A local Moscow court on Tuesday ordered the authorities to break up the rally because of noise and other complaints from residents.

Prominent activist Ilya Yashin said the group was now moving to a square that sits under a famous Stalinera skyscraper near the Moscow zoo.

“There are already about 20 people here. Come and join us,” Yashin tweeted.

Russians unhappy with Putin’s presidential return after a four-year stint as prime minister have been increasingly turning to creative forms of protest that slip through legal loopholes and do not require formal city sanction. More than 10,000 Russians of various ages joined a peaceful stroll though a neighbourhood near Chistye Prudy on Saturday in a clear bid to test the limits of the law.

Moscow painters have voiced plans to conduct a similar stroll over the weekend.

But members of the ruling party have vowed in recent days to toughen both restrictions and penalties for those who camp out and promenade through the city en masse. “These things can happen completely spontaneously and then no one’s security is assured. No government in the world would allow that,” Moscow city council chairman Vladimir Platonov told.