Police said some 8,000 gathered for the opposition rally at Moscow’s Kaluzhskaya Ploshchad as of 12 a.m. Saturday, February 4 though video feed from the site indicated the figure was considerably higher.

About 15,000 were in attendance for the rally in support of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Poklonnaya Gora an hour before its scheduled start at 1 p.m., Moscow police said. No video feed from the site was available at the time.

“People keep on arriving, the situation is changing constantly,” police said in a statement. Police estimates of attendance during two previous opposition rallies in December were considerably lower than those by organizers and independent observers.