From Moscow to Siberia, Russian anti-war activists took to the streets again Sunday to protest Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the arrests of hundreds of protesters each day by police, The Associated Press reported yesterday.
Demonstrators reportedly held pickets and marched in city centers, chanting “No to war!” as President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian nuclear deterrent to be put on high alert, upping the ante in the Kremlin’s standoff with the West and stoking fears of a nuclear war.
Protests against the invasion started Thursday in Russia and have continued daily ever since, even as Russian police have moved swiftly to crack down on the rallies and detain protesters, according to The Associated Press.
The Kremlin has reportedly sought to downplay the protests, insisting that a much broader share of Russians support the assault on Ukraine.
In addition to street protests, tens of thousands of people in recent days have endorsed open letters and signed petitions condemning the invasion. Celebrities and famous TV personalities spoke out against it, too. One online petition, launched hours after Putin announced the attack, has gathered over 930,000 signatures in four days, becoming one of the most widely supported petitions in Russia in recent years, The Associated Press added.
According to the OVD-Info, police detained at least 2,710 Russians in 51 cities for anti-war demonstrations Sunday, bringing the total of those detained over four days to nearly 6,000.
Founded in December 2021 by Moscow journalist Grigory Okhotin and programmer Daniil Beilinson, OVD-Info is an independent Russian human rights media project aimed at combating political persecution. They witnessed mass arrests of participants in the rally on December 5, 2011 against the rigging of parliamentary elections. First, they posted on Facebook the total number of detainees and their names. Seeing the demand for their work, by December 10, on the eve of the rally on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, they launched the OVD-Info website. On September 29, 2021 the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation designated OVD-Info as a "foreign agent".
