There was an interesting new post at Human Rights Watch. Take a look at this excerpt:

For the second weekend in a row, Russian police forcibly and at times brutally dispersed peaceful protests, arbitrarily detaining more than 5,000 people across Russia, Human Rights Watch said today. That topped the previous record for the largest number of people detained on a single day, set on January 23, 2021. The protesters expressed outrage over the arrest of political opposition figure Alexei Navalny and state corruption, among other grievances.

The authorities responded to the January 31 protests as they had the previous weekend, with numerous incidents of police brutality caught on cameras by journalists and private citizens, detentions of journalists and passers-by, and the opening of criminal cases against protesters. Again police arrested and raided the homes of Navalny’s associates and others the day before the protest, in a clear effort to stop them protesting and to intimidate others. Like last week, incidents of violence by protesters were isolated and almost exclusively in response to police use of force.

Read the full article here. Also, see our section on World Democracy or our articles on Worldwide Corruption.