Hundreds arrested at anti-war protests in Russia: Protesters stand in solidarity with Ukraine in Germany and Poland

More than 800 people who protested on Sunday against the Russian “special military operation” in Ukraine were arrested in about thirty cities in Russia, according to the NGO OVD-Info, which specializes in monitoring protests. AFP journalists were able to verify arrests of several protesters by the military in Moscow and in St. Petersburg, the country’s second city.
In Moscow, several dozen people defied a ban on demonstrations by rallying in a square near the Kremlin. At least 100 protesters and a journalist were taken away by police, according to a French agency reporter present at the scene. “Peace in the world!” one woman chanted as she was forcibly taken away by two officers. Several policemen drew the letter “Z” on their helmets, a symbol expressing support for Russian soldiers deployed in Ukraine.
On Sunday afternoon, the Interior Ministry reported that about 300 people had been arrested in the capital for “various violations of public order” and said that the possibility of initiating legal proceedings against them was being studied. In St. Petersburg, where there were many police buses in the center, protesters tried to go unnoticed. According to OVD-Info, at least 156 were arrested on the day. “Of course it’s scary to go out (to protest). They take everyone, several of my friends have been detained, others have been kicked out of university,” Kristina, 20, in a blue jacket and yellow hat, colors of the Ukrainian flag, told AFP.
“They are all traitors, they should be arrested,” a passerby in her sixties shouted at them. Despite the ban, groups of protesters gather daily in Russia against the military operation in Ukraine. Those who protest are fined or arrested. Last Sunday, more than 5,000 protesters were arrested. According to OVD-Info, more than 14,100 people have been detained since Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24.

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated on Saturday (13.03.2022) in Berlin, as well as in other German cities, including Hamburg, Frankfurt or Stuttgart, to protest against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There were also calls against Western rearmament and for climate protection.
The demonstration in Berlin started at noon from the central alexanderplatz square and culminated in the Victory Column, in the Tiergarten park, after passing through the Brandenburg Gate. According to organizers, 60,000 people gathered in the capital under the slogan “Stop war, peace and solidarity with the people of Ukraine,” although municipal police estimate that there were between 20,000 and 30,000 demonstrators. In any case, less than the 100,000 who on February 27 gathered in the German capital against the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
During a speech at the end of the tour, the president of the German Association of Trade Unions (DGB), Reiner Hoffmann, called for an immediate end to the war and demanded to keep the borders open to all those fleeing the conflict. In addition, he expressed himself in favor of sanctions against Russia, although he indicated that the position of the DGB is against supplying weapons to the Ukrainian Army, which earned him some boos from the crowd, according to the newspaper “Tagesspiegel”.
From another rostrum, located next to the Brandenburg Gate, the Ukrainian youth organization “Vitsche”, which had called for a separate protest, called for a no-fly zone over Ukraine and the country’s immediate accession to the European Union (EU). Some demonstrators, including Ukrainian refugees who had just arrived in Berlin, sang the national anthem and chanted the nationalist slogan “Slava Ukrayini” (Glory to Ukraine).
“Currently we estimate that more than 10,000 people arrive here every day,” the spokesman for the Senate’s Social Commission, Stefan Strauss, was quoted as saying by the evangelical press service. Although he explains that most do not ask for emergency accommodation, only on Saturday night about a thousand people were involved in emergency shelters, for which the central train station, exhibition halls and, now also, the old Tegel Airport have been enabled.
“Ukraine is a country of Europe,” reads the banner of this protester.
Berlin needs more support from the federal government, appealed Berlin’s ruling mayor, Franziska Giffey (SPD), who Along with Senator Katja Kipping (Die Linke) visited Tegel today: “We depend on the federal government to take over coordination and registration and to send more staff to Berlin,” he said.

The demonstrations, organized by more than fifty pacifist, environmental, religious and human rights organizations, as well as trade unions and churches, gathered, according to the organizers themselves, 35,000 participants in Stuttgart, 12,000 in Frankfurt; 10,000 in Hamburg and 8,000 in Leipzig. In these cases, the police calculation coincides more with that of the organizers.
In Hamburg, the demonstration also opened with the Ukrainian national anthem and a minute of silence. Hamburg Diakonia Pastor Dirk Ahrens said that “welcoming refugees is now our first task.” And that the demonstration showed that “society is not divided, but remarkably united.”

Original source in Spanish

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