The daughter of the tycoon Roman Abramovich added her voice to condemnation of Vladimir Putin as the Kremlin cracked down on widespread demonstrations inside Russia.

Sofia Abramovich posted an image on Instagram Stories showing the phrase “Russia wants a war with Ukraine”, with the word Russia crossed out and replaced with “Putin”. A second sentence read: “The biggest and most successful lie of Kremlin’s propaganda is that most Russians stand with Putin.” It was followed by an image of Putin with a red line across him.

Sofia Abramovich, who is in her mid-twenties and based in London, is known more for her glamorous lifestyle than for her politics. Her father, the Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich, 55, is widely considered a loyal supporter of Putin.

Her complaint reflected a sentiment shared by many Russians, who are horrified by the war even if they feel too intimidated to express their feelings vocally. Hundreds of people were detained across Russia in spontaneous protests on Thursday after Putin announced a military campaign to “demilitarise and de-Nazify” Ukraine.

According to OVD-Info, a rights group that tracks political arrests, a total of 1,820 demonstrators were detained in 58 Russian cities, including 1,002 in Moscow, where the biggest protest took place, drawing several thousand people to the streets. Riot police were stationed across the capital on Friday to stop any demonstrations.

In a sign the Kremlin was seeking to stop dissenting voices, Russia's state communications and internet watchdog, Roskomnadzor, announced “partial restrictions” on access to Facebook.

The agency demanded that Facebook lift its restrictions on the state news agency RIA Novosti, state TV channel Zvezda and pro-Kremlin news sites Lenta.Ru and Gazeta.Ru, but the platform did not comply.

A series of high-profile celebrities in Russia have expressed their anxiety at the war with its Slavic neighbour Ukraine, where many Russians have family roots, relatives or friends.

They include the television presenter Maxim Galkin, singer Valery Meladze and socialite Ksenya Sobchak, who predicted: “We will be disentangling ourselves from the consequences of this day for years to come.” The rapper Oxxxymiron, a big critic of the Kremlin, called for protests, branding the invasion “a crime and a catastrophe”.

De facto censorship on state television and a cautiousness about possible crackdowns on full-voiced protest means many dissenters have limited their concerns to social media.

Boris Grebenshchikov, 68, a musician from the band Aquarium, wrote: “This war is insanity and a disgrace for Russia.”

Elena Chernenko, a journalist with the Kommersant newspaper who collected a petition of 300 colleagues against the war, was ejected from the pool of reporters covering Russia's foreign ministry. The ministry told her she was thrown out for “unprofessionalism”, and accused her of “setting people up while hiding behind them”.

Chernenko, who had worked in the pool for 11 years, said the ministry’s decision was regrettable, “but these are the times, it seems”.

“I don’t believe that violence and injustice in one place [Donbas], justifies violence and injustice in another [the military operation],” she added.

Asked how Russia would come out of the Ukrainian campaign, Dmitry Muratov, the Nobel peace prizewinner and editor of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper in Moscow, told a TV interviewer: “The future is dead, the future is broken.”

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov sought to downplay the scale of the protests, saying that while Putin “hears everyone’s opinion”, he also knows “the share of those who have a different point of view and those who are sympathetic to such a necessary operation”.

The demonstrations in Russia were followed by protests in Britain, with hundreds of Ukrainians gathering in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

More demonstrations have been organised for this weekend outside Downing Street, which will call on the government to send troops and equipment to Ukraine, and impose “North Korea”-style sanctions on Russia. Other protests are due to take place in cities around the country over the weekend including Manchester, Birmingham, Belfast and Nottingham.

Several hundred people marched through heavy rain in Sydney chanting “Ukraine will prevail”, while protesters in Tokyo called for Russia to be expelled from the UN Security Council.

Thousands of people also took to the streets in Europe, with protesters — including many Ukrainians living abroad — in London, Nicosia, Berlin, Athens, Helsinki, Madrid and Milan draping themselves in flags and holding “stop the war” placards.

“You look at the people gathered here and everybody is scared ... We had peace for 80 years and all of a sudden, war is back in Europe.”

Agencies