THE number of Russians arrested for taking part in anti-war protests has hit 6,495, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group.

Mass street protests took place on Thursday night and over the weekend, and Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor has since been in overdrive, ordering online and regional media outlets to remove articles critical of the war and statements of protest against it.

President Vladimir Putin’s decision to attack Ukraine, which he said was aimed at defending ethnic Russians in the separatist Donbass region — at war with Ukraine since 2014 — from an imminent massacre by Ukrainian neonazis, has been broadly supported by opposition parties in the Duma, including the largest, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation.