MOSCOW: Thousands are expected to attend opposition rallies across Russia on Saturday, with tensions running high over criminal probes into protest leaders and the jailing of punk group Pussy Riot.
More than 16,000 people had signed up on popular social networking sites by Friday to attend the the "March of Millions" rally in Moscow, which the city authorities have sanctioned for up to 25,000 people.
Smaller protests were expected in Russia's second largest city of Saint Petersburg and in regional cities from the western exclave of Kaliningrad to the Far Eastern port of Vladivostok.
The protests come after the sentencing of the three women members of the pop group Pussy Riot to two years in prison, for their anti-Vladimir Putin protest in an Orthodox cathedral, prompted questions worldwide about the rule of law in Russia.
The authorities have also targeted the most popular protest leaders with a number of probes, most notably slapping charismatic lawyer Alexei Navalny with embezzlement charges over his role as advisor to a regional governor.
On Friday, the lower house of parliament voted to expel lawmaker Gennady Gudkov of left-leaning A Just Russia, who has been a prominent speaker at rallies, as investigators probe his alleged business activities.
Saturday's protest action will gather "those who consider they also have rights. They just do, and that's all," wrote Navalny in his blog.
A probe into crowd violence at a mass protest on May 6 ahead of President Vladimir Putin's inauguration has seen 16 people charged and 12 detained behind bars, in what is expected to be a major trial cracking down on the opposition.
Activists also face the threat of much higher fines of up to 300,000 rubles ($10,000) for violating protest rules under a new law that Putin signed in June.
The Moscow protest plans, with slogans including "Help Putin start drawing his pension", includes a march along the leafy boulevard ring followed by a rally on an avenue symbolically named after Soviet-era peace campaigner Andrei Sakharov. The march will begin at 2:00 pm (1000 GMT).
In a move likely to draw larger numbers onto the streets, the Moscow city parliament's Communist party faction said it would participate in the rally, the first time the party has put in an official appearance.
"We made a decision to participate in the March of Millions," the head of the city's Communist faction, Andrei Klychkov, wrote on Twitter, despite party leader Gennady Zyuganov criticising the protest movement.
Moscow police warned of possible "provocations" at the protest, sending around 7,000 officers to patrol the march.
The last rally in June drew around 50,000 people, according to organisers, and followed roughly the same route as the rally scheduled for Saturday.
Russia's opposition has staged a series of large-scale anti-Putin protests in Moscow since the December parliamentary polls which many people consider rigged, but has attracted smaller numbers since Putin's return to the Kremlin.
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