More than 24 people detained at protest in Moscow

One popular Russian Telegram news channel estimated that some 200 people turned out.

Allies of jailed Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny and Russian opposition politician Maksim Kats voiced support for the protest on Friday, while the Moscow prosecutor's office early on Saturday warned Russians not to participate in "unauthorised mass events".

According to OVD-Info, an independent website that monitors political arrests in Russia, police detained 27 people during the protest, mostly journalists.

According to SOTA, most were later released, although a male protester, Yaroslav Ryazanov, was still in detention on Saturday evening.

Aware of the public backlash, the Russian military has since late 2022 increasingly sought to bolster the forces in Ukraine by enlisting more volunteers.

The authorities claimed that about 500,000 signed contracts with the Defence Ministry last year.

Still, the wives' and relatives' calls to bring mobilised reservists home have been stonewalled by Russia's government-controlled media, and some pro-Kremlin politicians have sought to cast them as Western stooges.

Protesters on Saturday angrily rejected the accusation.

Maria Andreyeva, whose husband and brother are fighting in Ukraine, told SOTAvision that she saw the fighting in Ukraine as "a great tragedy that happened between two brotherly peoples".

"Almost every Russian has relatives in Ukraine, close and distant, so... this is a situation that has struck us to the core. After the Second World War, it seemed to us that our grandfathers died so that there would never be another (conflict)," Ms Andreyeva said.

The protest came just weeks before the Russian presidential election, scheduled to take place over three days on March 15-17, that Mr Putin is all but assured to win.

After Ms Andreyeva and others laid flowers at the monument, they headed to Mr Putin's campaign headquarters to present their demands to him.

Last month, another Russian presidential hopeful met Ms Andreyeva and other soldiers' relatives campaigning for their return.

Former local legislator Boris Nadezhdin, who openly opposes the war in Ukraine, criticised the Kremlin's decision to keep them in the ranks as long as the fighting continues.

"We want (the authorities) to treat people who are doing their duty in a decent way," Mr Nadezhdin said.