Lyubov Sobol at a rally on Saturday in Moscow to demand that opposition candidates be allowed to run in an upcoming local election.
Sept. 2, 2019
MOSCOW — A Russian lawyer in the forefront of recent street protests in Moscow was arrested Monday evening in the Russian capital, along with a second opposition activist and an elected local councilor in what appeared to be a sweep by the authorities of protest leaders not already in detention.
The arrests in Moscow targeted Lyubov Sobol, a 31-year-old lawyer who works for Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, an independent group led by Aleksei A. Navalny, another anti-corruption campaigner; Nikolai Lyaskin; and Ilya Azar, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta, an independent daily newspaper, and a local councilor.
Ms. Sobol, the most prominent of the activists known to have been picked up on Monday, has been one of the main public faces of a recent wave of protests, including a peaceful march attended by several thousand people that she led on Saturday through the center of Moscow.