Russian police on Saturday detained a group of around 20 journalists, including an AFP reporter, covering a protest in Moscow by the wives of men mobilised to fight in Ukraine.
The women have staged rare protests outside the Kremlin walls for weeks, in an uncomfortable movement for the authorities that has so far not been put down.
A detained AFP video journalist said Russian and foreign reporters — all men — were detained and transported in a van to a police station.
The group of journalists was arrested as they covered and filmed the women — who are demanding their partners be brought home from Ukraine — outside Red Square.
Video footage showed police bringing reporters wearing yellow press vests to police vans.
The wives of mobilised men have been staging protests outside the Kremlin walls every weekend for weeks, symbolically bringing red flowers to a tomb of an unknown soldier.
While Moscow has orchestrated a huge crackdown on dissent at home, the women’s movement has so far gone unpunished.
The detained AFP journalist said around 40 people took part in the protest.
An online live stream posted by the women’s group showed participants walking together through central Moscow.
“We are here as the women who need their husbands,” said one of the women in the live stream.