Moscow police detain hundreds of young people in a weekend sweep, calling it a 'preventive measure'

Police in Moscow, the Russian capital, carried out a mass roundup in the Kitai-Gorod neighborhood on the evening of November 7. By the most widely cited estimates, 150 to 200 people were detained, although some reports put the figure at 300. Most were young people, including minors. The details were reported by Meduza, an independent Russian outlet.

The raid was planned. At about 8 p.m., 10 police vans arrived at Gorka Park on Bolshoi Spasoglinishchevsky Lane, and young people were loaded into them. Eyewitnesses said officers were taking "anyone and everyone."

Conditions of detention

The detainees were taken to police stations and held for several hours. They said they were not allowed to drink water or use the bathroom in the vans. A person who used an e-cigarette was reportedly beaten. The parents of another detainee said their son was hit in the stomach several times, and other reports of police brutality emerged. No detainees were reported to have been held at a station overnight.

Police would not let parents in to see the detainees, and late at night a crowd gathered outside the Tagansky district police station. Parents tried to enter while officers held them back. Yet the police themselves had summoned the parents, since minors were being released to their legal guardians.

Fines and pressure

At least 17 detainees were cited for drinking in public, and some received military summonses. Idite Lesom, a human rights project, said two people contacted it after receiving summonses to report on November 9 "to update their military registration records." One has health problems but lacks documents to prove them; the other has a deferment as a doctoral student. Some detainees were persistently urged to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry, and others were fined for disobeying officers.

Russia's Interior Ministry described the raid as a "preventive measure." In a video, the mother of one detainee said she was told at the station that children are not allowed in central Moscow at all, especially on weekends, "because of the situation in the country."

Even Yekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, who is known for reporting people to the authorities, questioned why parents of minors were not being admitted, writing on Telegram that she did not understand it.

The November 7 raid was the largest, but teenagers have been detained in central Moscow throughout the year. The outlet Post- has counted six major raids on young people in Kitai-Gorod since the start of the year.