More than 15,0000 Russian protestors descended Saturday on the eastern city of Khabarovsk in opposition to the arrest of the region's governor, who many believe was wrongly charged with multiple murders. It was the eight-consecutive day of demonstrations.

Sergey Furgal, Khabarovsk's governor, was arrested in early July and flown to a Moscow jail, where he will be serving two months. Russia’s Investigative Committee believes Furgal was involved in murders of businessmen in 2004 and 2005, but the governor denies all allegations.

The demonstrators believe the charges are politically motivated. Furgal, a member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic party, defeated a Vladimir Putin-backed candidate for Khabarovsk’s governorship in 2018.

Protesters also marched for President Putin to resign. The protests come after a constitutional amendment was passed at the beginning of the month, allowing Putin to stay in power for 16 more years.

The Kremlin denies that the investigation into Furgal was politically motivated.

“The investigation claims they have irrefutable evidence,” Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told the Wall Street Journal. “Therefore, there is no [political] policy here. There is simply a very serious accusation.”

Khabarovsk is located roughly 4,000 miles east of Moscow.

The Journal noted that the Khabarovsk protestors also demonstrated against the "declining living standards and job losses in the wake of the coronavirus crisis that has infected more than 765,000 Russians nationwide." In the Khabarovsk region, around 12.2% of the population lives below the poverty line.

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