Nearly 70 Moscow metro passengers and pickters have been detained across the Russian capital on the Russia Day national holiday Sunday, an independent watchdog has said.

“At least 67 people were detained by police on Russia Day,” the OVD-Info police-monitoring website said.

“Most of them — 43 people — were detained in the Moscow metro using facial

The head of the Russian Committee for the Prevention of Torture said Sunday he had disbanded the organisation after it was branded a "foreign agent" by authorities, a label he called an "insult". 

"We don't want to continue working by being labelled 'foreign agents'. We consider this term an insult and slander," Sergei Babinets said on Telegram,

Russian forces said Sunday they had struck a site in western Ukraine storing US- and EU-supplied weapons, as fighting intensified in an eastern region where the country's top commander said the land "is covered in blood."

The strike on the town of Chortkiv, a rare attack by Russia in the relatively calm west of Ukraine, left 22 people injured, the

The restaurant that launched McDonald's in Russia in 1990, heralding Moscow's opening after decades of Soviet rule, reopened Sunday with a new name and logo in a potent reminder of the upheaval sparked by the conflict in Ukraine.

The U.S. fast-food giant announced on May 16 that it would exit Russia in the wake of its Ukraine offensive.

In Moscow's