MOSCOW: A Ukrainian lawmaker said Sunday he was detained by Russian police ahead of a Moscow march to honour opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was gunned down near the Kremlin.
"Police have detained me," Alexei Goncharenko wrote on Facebook. "I did not shout anything, did not carry any banners or flags -- they simply detained me over the T-shirt."
According to a picture posted on Facebook, Goncharenko's T-shirt carried a printed picture of Nemtsov and said in Ukrainian: "Heroes never die", a hommage to a popular slogan used during last year's pro-Western uprising in Ukraine.
The lawmaker said he travelled to Russia to take part in a Nemtsov memorial rally Sunday that saw tens of thousands of people march through central Moscow.
Police declined immediate comment but Russian state television confirmed the lawmaker's detention and said he would be handed over to investigators.
Pro-Moscow supporters accuse Goncharenko, who hails from the southern Ukrainian city of Odessa, of taking part in rallies that led to the deaths of dozens of pro-Russian activists.
Some 50 people were killed in Odessa last May, with most perishing in a blaze during clashes between pro-Russian activists and supporters of Kiev.
Ukrainian parliament speaker Volodymyr Groisman meanwhile urged the Kiev authorities to act urgently to obtain his release.
Another Ukrainian national, Nadia Savchenko, has been held in a Moscow jail for almost nine months after being charged with involvement in the death of two Russian reporters in a mortar attack in east Ukraine.
The 33-year-old helicopter navigator denies the charges. She has been on hunger strike for nearly 80 days in protest at her detention and rights activists said late last week she could die within days.
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