Kushagra Bansal – Mumbai Uncensored, 7th March 2022
On Sunday, over 4300 people were detained in Russia at a country wide anti-war protest against Russian president Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
Protestors screamed “NO TO WAR” and “SHAME ON YOU”, according to the photos and videos that were uploaded on different social media websites. These same posts got a lot of attention on social media platforms.
Arrests were made in 56 cities, including the pacific port city of Vladivostok and Siberian city of Irkutsk.
In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, hundreds of protestors were seen being arrested. A few protestors were shown being thrown on the ground and beaten up by police in riot gear and murals of president Putin were seen to be defaced.
Russia’s internal military said that police had detained around 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St Petersburg and 1061 in various other cities. Although, the OVD-Info, a protest monitoring group stated that they documented at least 4,366 people that were detained over 56 cities.
“The screws are being fully tightened, essentially we are witnessing military censorship” said by Maria Kuznetsova, an OVD-Info spokeswoman.
The arrests done on Sunday brings a total of over 10,000 people being detained due to different protests against the Ukraine Invasion of Russia.
A video was circulated on social media where a protestor was seen shouting in the city of Khabarovsk “No to war! How are you not ashamed of yourself?” before two policemen come in to arrest the man. Police was also seen using a loudspeaker to tell a small group of protestors “You are taking part in an unsanctioned public event. We demand you disperse now”.
Imprisoned Kremlin critic, Alexey Navalny had called out for protests on Sunday across the country against Putin and the rest of the world against the Ukraine invasion. He stated “Because of Putin, Russia now means war for many people. That is not right. It was Putin and not Russia that attacked Ukraine”.
