A woman was recorded telling a police officer she had survived the Nazi siege of Leningrad, the former name of St. Petersburg, and lost both her parents. Another woman added, “We have relatives, we have friends in Ukraine.”

“You came to support fascists?” the officer responded, a reference to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s justification for the war.

“What fascists?” the crowd asked.

The officer then gave an order: “Arrest everyone.”

Authorities on Sunday arrested at least 4,640 people across 56 cities in Russia, reported OVD-Info, which was declared a foreign agent by Russian authorities last year during Putin’s sweeping suppression of activists, rights groups and opposition figures. The group reported multiple instances of excessive force against protesters, including beatings and use of stun guns. Among those detained were 13 journalists and 113 juveniles.

Russia’s interior ministry said earlier Sunday that police had arrested more than 3,500 people “for taking part in unauthorized rallies” in Moscow, St. Petersburg and elsewhere. The agency warned protesters that authorities would continue to target demonstrations and their organizers.

Footage from reporters in Russia showed a large police presence at demonstrations across the country, many clad in riot gear or driving armored trucks. Journalists with Western outlets — citing Russia’s newly-passed law restricting discussion of the invasion — spoke elliptically about the “situation” in Ukraine as they narrated protesters’ arrests.

Some videos showed police beating demonstrators. In one, several officers wearing body armor surrounded a person who was flailing on the ground. One officer struck the person with a baton and kicked the person before another shooed away the camera filming the encounter.

In another, posted to Twitter by the student media outlet DOXA, three officers kicked and detained someone lying on the ground outside a children’s department store.

Brian Taylor, a Syracuse University political scientist who studies Russia, said in a tweet that the clip showed a “Dystopian Moscow.”

Since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, antiwar protests have occurred daily, OVD-Info reported. Russia has detained at least 13,000 protesters in 147 cities.

Spontaneous mass demonstrations are illegal in Russia, with protesters facing the possibility of fines and jail time.

The Kremlin’s crackdown on free expression has only intensified in recent days, with Putin signing into law a new measure that criminalizes the “dissemination of falsehoods about the use of Russia’s armed forces” — a broad provision that makes public displays of dissent dangerous and difficult. Violation of the new law is punishable by up to 15 years in prison.

Despite the risks involved, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has appealed directly to Russians to speak out against their government’s actions. In a Sunday video address, he switched from Ukrainian to Russian and said the citizens of the two countries were part of the same fight.

“It’s a fight for your country too,” he said. “If you’re silent now then only your poverty will speak later — and it will be answered by repression.”