Russian opposition groups in more than 100 cities in 44 countries around the world — from Berlin to Seoul to Los Angeles — plan to mark the anniversary of the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine with three days of demonstrations outside Russian diplomatic missions or on public squares.
The organizers are calling the protests a test of whether their historically fractious groups, which operate outside Russia, can work in a coordinated manner to oppose the Kremlin. The groups hope to achieve “an unprecedented level of cooperation within the diaspora,” said one coordinator, Inna Berezkina, of the Moscow School for Civic Education, which is now operating out of the Baltics.
The initial idea was to hold the protests on Friday, but that changed after some Ukrainian groups objected because they felt that the anniversary should be a day to commemorate the toll of the war in their country. Individual Ukrainian diaspora groups around the world are also planning protests.
So the Russian coordinators decided to shift many of their events to Saturday, thinking that separate demonstrations would also highlight that there is Russian opposition to the war.
“This is about solidarity and grief on the one hand, but also about the visibility of Russian protests,” Ms. Berezkina said. It is impossible to predict turnout, she noted, but independent Russian news media outlets have been plugging the demonstrations on their broadcasts.
Demonstrations are scheduled for the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Friday afternoon, as well as outside the United Nations in New York, plus another 14 American cities over the weekend and in virtually every major European capital.
Most opposition leaders have fled Russia in the face of heavy repression since the invasion a year ago when the Kremlin criminalized opposing the war.
Any thoughts that demonstrations inside the country might be part of the protests were dashed with the arrest earlier in February of a Russian activist who brazenly sought a permit to hold a public protest against the war on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, outside the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, the main security police.
The activist, Maksim Lypkan, 18, was arrested the day after his permit request was rejected, and he was accused of discrediting the military and trying to organize an unauthorized rally, according to OVD-Info, a rights organization that tracks Russian court cases.
Still, those organizing the demonstrations hope some messages against the war will emerge on social media from inside the country, though any would likely be made anonymously.
Russian opposition groups have been working since December to give the effort something of a unified look, as a way of emphasizing that they are acting in concert. The protests are expected use to some of the same slogans, music, posters and hashtags.
Many of the demonstrations are expected to include a recent song by the Russian dissident band Pussy Riot called “Mama, Don’t Watch TV,” a reference to the influence exerted, especially on older Russians, by false state propaganda that portrays the Kremlin as waging a war against Nazis in Ukraine.
Some of the posters at the demonstrations will include black and white sketches by Victor Melamed, a Russian artist who fled abroad, who has drawn portraits of several hundred Ukrainian victims of the invasion that include brief biographical details.
One, for example, reads: “Irina Salamatenko, 39, dentist. Died when a nine-story building she was walking past was hit by a Russian missile and collapsed. Over 40 people died, 80 wounded.”
The New York Times
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