Ukraine crisis: Anti-war sentiment grows in Russia despite government crackdown
- According to OVD-Info, rights group that tracks political arrests, at least 460 people in 34 cities were detained on Saturday, including more than 200 in Moscow
- An online petition to stop the attack on Ukraine, launched soon after it started on Thursday morning, garnered over 780,000 signatures by Saturday evening
As Russian troops were closing in on the Ukrainian capital, more Russians spoke out on Saturday against the invasion, even as the government’s official rhetoric grew increasingly harsher.
Street protests, albeit small, resumed in the Russian capital of Moscow, the second-largest city of St Petersburg and other Russian cities for the third straight day, with people taking to the streets despite mass detentions on Thursday and Friday. According to OVD-Info, rights group that tracks political arrests, at least 460 people in 34 cities were detained over anti-war protests on Saturday, including more than 200 in Moscow.
Open letters condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept pouring, too. More than 6,000 medical workers put their names under one on Saturday; over 3,400 architects and engineers endorsed another while 500 teachers signed a third one. Similar letters by journalists, municipal council members, cultural figures and other professional groups have been making the rounds since Thursday.
A prominent contemporary art museum in Moscow called Garage announced on Saturday it was halting its work on exhibitions and postponing them “until the human and political tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased.”
“We cannot support the illusion of normality when such events are taking place,” the statement by the museum read. “We see ourselves as part of a wider world that is not divided by war.”
An online petition to stop the attack on Ukraine, launched soon after it started on Thursday morning, gathered more than 780,000 signatures by Saturday evening, making it one of the most supported online petitions in Russia in recent years.
Statements decrying the invasion even came from some parliament members, who earlier this week voted to recognise the independence of two separatist regions in eastern Ukraine, a move that preceded the Russian assault. Two politicians from the Communist Party, which usually toes the Kremlin’s line, spoke out against the hostilities on social media.