MOSCOW, March 11 - RAPSI. Once again the police detained opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov this weekend for disobedience to the police after a protest rally in central Moscow, RIA Novosti reports.

Udaltsov is to stand trial on March 13 and may be punished by up to 15-day arrest or a fine of 500 to 1,000 rubles ($17-34).

The second protest rally held after the March 4 presidential elections ended with detentions like the first one.

The protesters put forward the same demands and chanted the same slogans: reversal of both the presidential and parliamentary election results, freedom of speech and release of political prisoners.

Udaltsov stands for continuing protest actions and several rallies more may be conducted before the president's inauguration in May.
Protest rallies, although on a smaller scale, took place in some other Russian cities. The police detained 85 people during an unauthorized rally in Nizhny Novgorod.

The first protest rally came less than 24 hours after a landslide victory of Vladimir Putin secured him a third presidential term.

About 250 people were detained on March 5 in Moscow following the opposition rally against the outcome of the presidential elections.

The Fair Elections movement attended by up to 14,000 people has later developed into unauthorized protests.

The Voters League alleges that thousands of violations have been committed during the March 4 presidential election.

Over three thousand violations were recorded, while more than 100 observers were expelled from polling stations, according to Voters League representative Andrei Demin.

Presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov said his observers exposed about 4,000 violations at the elections; many of the fraud techniques have never been seen before.

Billionaire candidate Prokhorov said he would go to the court over the election violations. Vladimir Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democratic Party is reported to be ready to support Prokhorov in his complaints.