Police detained eight journalists, including RIA Novosti reporter Kirill Rubtsov, in Minsk on Tuesday while they were covering protest rallies in the Belarusian capital.
The journalists were stopped near the Dynamo Stadium in downtown Minsk for a document check. Andrei Shavlyugo of the Belarusian news agency Belapan and Mikita Vedovertov of the Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda were among those detained, according to Rubtsov, who says he showed his press pass to the police. The reporters were taken to a police station.
A spokesman for the Russian embassy in Minsk said they were checking the information about the incident.
Hundreds of school and university students took to Minsk streets on the first day of the new academic year to protest against police brutality and the long-time reign of President Alexander Lukashenko. According to unconfirmed reports in local media, around 20 people have been detained.
Belarus entered a fourth week of mass protests which followed the disputed re-election of Lukashenko, who has been in power since 1994, to a sixth term.
Figures from the election commission, controlled by Lukashenko, showed that the president won with 80.1 percent of the vote while opposition challenger Svetlana Tikhanovskaya came in second with 10.1 percent. Critics of the incumbent alleged mass vote-rigging, while the opposition formed a Coordination Council to help the transfer of power to a new government.
The president, who refuses to hold new elections, has accused the governments of Britain, Poland, and Czechia of coordinating the protests and agreed in a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin to seek Russian military assistance should the situation spiral our of control.
