Police swoop on anti-war protests in Moscow but opposition to conflict remains muted
RUSSIAN police yesterday arrested several people who protested against Moscow’s military escalation in Ukraine, bundling demonstrators into vans for holding up signs reading “No to war”.
While there is little public enthusiasm in Russia for conflict with its neighbour, protests have been muted after a long Kremlin clampdown on dissent.
Police arrived minutes after Mikhail Leipunsky, a 48-year-old interior designer, unfurled an anti-war poster in Moscow’s Pushkin Square.
“This is the only form of protest I have. Those people don’t represent me and they have made a decision for me … It made me feel so hopeless,” he said of the decision to authorise the use of Russian troops the day before.
Another protester, Grigory Sheyanov, said he had supported Russia’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 but the prospect of an invasion now made him shudder.
“I’m against Russia’s militarist stance. I came out for peace,” the 45-year-old paediatrician said. “What’s happening now is a preparation for a big war.”
The two men and four others, including a man who shook a protester’s hand, were detained. Four were still in custody yesterday evening.
The muted protests stand in stark contrast to the response when Russia annexed Crimea eight years ago.
While the move was generally seen as the righting of a historic wrong, tens of thousands of people thronged Moscow’s streets over several weekends to demonstrate against the annexation.
Appetite for protest has been dampened following repression of the opposition – including the jailing of Vladimir Putin’s most outspoken critic, Alexei Navalny – amid resignation about Russia’s isolation after years of sanctions.
A similarly short-lived protest was held in another area of Moscow yesterday, during which two women were bundled into vans for holding posters saying “No to war with Ukraine” and “No to Russian troops in Donbas”.
In St Petersburg, unknown activists hung a banner reading “No to war” in crimson letters on a central bridge.
Online, many Russians expressed their frustration over the collapse of the ruble in the wake of further Western sanctions. Others reacted with disbelief to Mr Putin’s claims that Ukrainian nationhood was a “Soviet invention”.
After the annexation of Crimea, state television showed back-to-back coverage of jubilant crowds welcoming the peninsula’s “return” to the motherland.
Yesterday the mood was darker. News channels showed footage of a shelling in Donbas as well as images of a sombre Mr Putin laying flowers on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.