“Many participants of the forum, including myself, were confronted with the fact that mobile phone service entirely disappeared at the entrance to the camp in the Khimki Forest,” Belyakov said on the website of A Just Russia on Tuesday. “Certain police officers told me under condition of anonymity that ‘jammers’ are definitely being used. They even told me where one of them was.”

Belyakov added that he took photographs and video footage of the devices used to jam cell phone service.

“I’ve already sent Ministry of Internal Affairs Chief Rashid Gumarovich Nurgaliyev a deputy inquiry demanding an explanation of the goal of the operation to suppress the mobile phone signal in the Khimki Forest,” he said.

ITAR-TASS reported late on Tuesday that the Ministry of Internal Affairs is denying that any jamming devices were used at Anti-Seliger and accused Belyakov of speaking “rubbish.”

The forum, dubbed “Anti-Seliger,” was held in the Khimki Forest outside Moscow from June 17-20. According to organizers, the goal of the event was to give oppositionist, environmental, and other activists an opportunity to share their experiences and learn from one another. Approximately 3000 people took part.

Over the course of the forum, lectures were given by prominent journalists, political analysts, and human rights activists, including Leonid Parfyonov, Artemy Troitsky, Stanislav Belkovsky, Oleg Kashin, Aleksei Navalny, Yelena Panfilova, Valery Panyushkin, and Igor Chestin.

Anti-Seliger was organized as an alternative to Seliger, an annual forum held by Russia’s Federal Agency for Youth Issues (Rosmolodezh) and the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi. Seliger is notorious for its grotesque displays of anti-oppositionist propaganda; past targets of harassment have included United Civil Front leader Garry Kasparov, leading human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves. Nashi leaders have admitted that the group – and, by extension, the forum – were created “to prevent an Orange Revolution” ahead of Russia’s 2008 presidential election. According to public records, Rosmolodezh head Vasily Yakemenko plans to spend no less than 178 million rubles ($6.37 million USD) on Seliger 2011.

Demonstrations were held in about 50 cities across the country, but even the largest in the cities of Irkutsk and Vladivostok consisted of no more than 2,000 people. Organizers in Irkutsk, which included the liberal Yabloko party, the opposition Solidarity movement, and a variety of human rights organizations, had originally projected that 10,000 people would be taking part in the demonstration.

Approximately 70 people were detained in Moscow, where several hundred people turned out for a protest on Pushkin Square that had earlier been banned by city authorities. Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political movement, was among those detained and said on Sunday that he plans to file a criminal suit against the city authorities for causing massive disorder, beating detained protesters, and using pepper spray to disperse the crowd.

Oppositionists complained that there was no reason for the city to ban their peaceful protest, which was largely focused on calling for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov to resign. One of the protesters who turned up at Pushkin Square was detained for holding a sign reading “Zhukovsky or a new Cherkizon?” referring to the controversial government shutdown of a Moscow market last summer that put tens of thousands of merchants out of work. However, when the protester showed the police his identification as State Duma Deputy Anton Belyakov, a member of the party A Just Russia, the police not only released him but put began voicing agreement that it was indeed about time for Mayor Luzhkov to go.

The most creative rally was held in Kaliningrad, where an anti-government protest of about 10,000 people had taken place in January. The stage was set for Saturday to see about 30,000 participants, when city officials relegated the protest to a sports arena instead of the open city center as organizers had wanted, on the basis that a farmers market was planned for the original location. Fearing what could happen if violence was to break out in an enclosed area, local opposition leader Konstantin Doroshok agreed to cancel the rally after holding negotiations with Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos. As part of their deal, a four hour question-and-answer session was held in Kaliningrad at the time when the rally was intended to occur, in which the governor and Doroshok took part.

Left on their own, however, a group of activists organized on the social networking website Vkontakte and rallied on the market in the early afternoon. Given that the governor had acquired the nickname “the Tangerine” among Kaliningrad oppositionists, the protesters held the fruits above their heads and called for Boos and Putin both to step down. Approximately 1000 people turned out for what has since been dubbed the “tangerine flash mob.”

Other rallies, consisting of between a few dozen to several hundred participants, were held in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Yaroslavl, and other cities across the country.