Protesters took the city streets of Russia to oppose President Putin’s war against Ukraine and its people.
Protesters across the cities of Russia took the streets to show their opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war with Ukraine, as the bloody conflict entered its fourth day. Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and dozens of other Russian cities on February 27, Sunday.
The protests have been met once again with strong police response, with footage emerging of officers dressed in riot gear tackling people to the ground and dragging demonstrators away, including in many cases women and teenagers.
Russians had been skeptical about Putin’s plans to attack the pro-Western neighbor. Moscow was asleep when Putin ordered an air and ground assault on Ukraine in the small hours of Thursday.
As troops advanced, the Kremlin said it was certain that Russians would “support” the war and that Ukraine needed to be “liberated and cleansed of Nazis”.
But with shocking scenes of death in Ukraine, many prominent figures publicly spoke out against the war and thousands of ordinary Russians defied draconian anti-protest legislation to take to the streets across the country.
According to AFP correspondents at the scene, thousands of people gathered near Pushkin Square in central Moscow, while up to 1,000 people gathered in the former imperial capital Saint Petersburg.
The invasion of Ukraine is taking place during an unprecedented crackdown on the Russian opposition, with most protest leaders assassinated, jailed, or forced out of the country.
Jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who used to mobilize Russia’s largest protests against Putin, is serving a two-and-a-half-year sentence in a penal colony outside Moscow.
OVD-Info, a Russian human rights media project, which tracks arrests at opposition rallies, said nearly 1,700 people were detained in 53 Russian cities. More than 900 were arrested in Moscow and over 400 in Saint Petersburg.
Dressed in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag and bearing posters like “No World War 3” and “Russians go home” some demonstrators chanted “shame” against the Russian President while others waved banners with slogans like “Putin murderer” or “stop the monster”.
The same slogan, “No to war” was spray-painted on the front gate of the Russian parliament’s lower house. Some protesters gathered in front shouting “glory to Ukraine” and singing Ukrainian songs.
Hans Georg Kieler, 49, who was at the demonstration said: “It is important to me for Germany to show that it is standing for democracy in Europe.” A pregnant 35-year-old said: “I hate Russia, I hate all Russians,” adding that her mother was now sitting in a cellar in Kyiv in fear of bombs.
Anastasia Nestulya, 23, who lives in Moscow said: “I am in shock. My relatives and loved ones live in Ukraine. What can I tell them over the phone? You hang in there? People were afraid to protest. In Saint Petersburg, many struck a similar note.”
Svetlana Volkova, 27 said: “I have a feeling that the authorities have gone mad, people have been fooled by propaganda.” She also said few people were willing to protest in Russia.
Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24, an estimated 4,000 protesters have been detained across 44 cities in Russia. As many as 900 protesters are believed to have been arrested today, though estimates currently vary.
The demonstrations themselves have been peaceful, as anti-war activists carry signs reading “No War” through major streets. In most cities, the protests were smaller than Thursday’s demonstrations, which saw several thousand people take to the streets from the western enclave of Kaliningrad to Siberia in the east.
Sunday’s demonstrations coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, one of Putin’s fiercest critics.
Nemtsov was shot in the back on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, where anti-Putin demonstrators today gathered to pay tribute to the late politician and continue their protest of the war in Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called directly on Russians to come out and oppose their country’s invasion, and on Friday thanked those who demonstrated, saying “to all citizens of the Russian Federation who are coming out to protest, I want to say we see you. It means that you heard us”.