TODAY: 20,000 gather in Moscow to protest election results, hundreds detained as further rally is planned; international reactions; more allegations of voting fraud; Peskov says Putin’s tears caused by wind; activist group Femen sentenced. Katya Zatuliveter, Syria resolution, Khodorkovsky director interviewed. 

The opposition claim that 20,000 people (police estimate 14,000) gathered in Moscow’s Pushkin Square last night for a rally that started peacefully and ended with riot police dispersals and detentions.  250-550 people were detained and subsequently released, including opposition figureheads Alexei Navanly (who tweeted from a police van after his arrest) and Sergei Udaltsov.  The BBC has footage of Navalny’s detention and a brief interview with him, as well as clips of protesters being ‘roughly dispersed’ by riot police.  The crowd chanted ‘Russia without Putin’ and ‘Putin is a thief’, and later, when police arrived to detain them, ‘The police with the people!’  U.S. Ambassador Michael McFaul called the detentions ‘troubling’.  5,000 (or 2,000, depending on your source) also gathered in St Petersburg.  A further rally is planned for March 10, as negotiations on its whereabouts continue.  You can view images from the protests here.