Scuffles at pro-Navalny protest in Yekaterinburg

Several thousand people turned out in protest in Russia's fourth-largest city, Yekaterinburg, on Saturday demanding the release of Alexei Navalny, the country's top opposition figure.Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin's most prominent and durable foe, was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.

Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a criminal conviction in a case that Navalny says was illegitimate.More than 350 people were detained in protests in the Far East and Siberia, according to the arrests-monitoring group OVD-Info, and large demonstrations were expected in the afternoon in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities in the European section of the country.

Demonstrations took place in the Pacific port city of Vladivostok, the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, and the country's third-largest city of Novosibirsk among other locations.Thirteen people were reported to have been arrested at the protest in Yakutsk, where the temperature was -50 C (-58 F).