Stifling Dissent

"If they continue to do what they are doing [defiant Ukrainian push-back], they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood."

"And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience [when they should have meekly surrendered to the Russian military]."

"These sanctions that are being imposed [by the West], they are akin to declaring war. But thank God, we haven't got there yet."

Russian President Vladimir Putin

 

"They're destroying us."

"They will not even give us an opportunity to count the wounded and the killed because the shelling does not stop."

Mayor Vadym Boychenko, Mariupol, Ukraine

"The screws are being fully tightened -- essentially we are witnessing military censorship."

"We are seeing rather big protests today, even in Siberian cities where we only rarely saw such numbers of arrests."

Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info spokeswoman

Police officers detain a man during a protest against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in central Moscow on Thursday. AFP via Getty Images

Over 4,300 were detained on Sunday as country-wide protects took place in Russia over President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. Protesters in their thousands chanted "No to war!", and "Shame on you!", according to OVD-Info, an independent protest monitoring group, bolstered by numerous videos posted on social media sites by activists and bloggers in Russia, defiant in the face of government crack-downs on their 'illegal' protests. 

In the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, dozens of protesters were detained, one highlighted in a video while being beaten to the ground by police wearing riot gear. In the city a mural of President Putin had been defaced. These protests and the arrests that follow, carry a potential penalty of up to 15 years in prison. Police detained  roughly 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St. Petersburg, and 1,051 in other cities, figures published by Russia's Interior Ministry.

And according to the Russian Interior Ministry, 5,200 people had been involved in the protests. The detention of at least 4,366 people in 56 different cities was documented by the OVD-Info group. While the OVD-Info group's figure was likely accurate, the figure the Interior Ministry cited as the total number country-wide taking part in the protests is likely a deliberate underestimate to emphasize the 'fringe movement' the protests reflect.

January 2021, which saw thousands of people in the streets demanding release from prison of opposition leader Alexei Navalny following his return from Germany where he had convalesced from a nerve agent poisoning attempt, represented the last such protests with similar numbers of arrests. Short reports of the protests were carried nominally by some Russian state-controlled media, but the events escaped notice in news bulletins.

 

Russian police detain a protestor at a rally held in Moscow to denounce Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine. Photograph: Yuri Kochetkov/EPA

 

What the RIA news agency chose to feature was footage of ostensible supporters of the Kremlin driving along the Manezhnaya Square embankment in Moscow -- where participants of an unsanctioned protests against Russia's military operation in Ukraine were arrested -- carrying Russian flags, displaying the "Z" and "V" insignia of Russian forces on tanks operating in Ukraine.

Russian values were being tested by the West, which itself offered only excessive consumption and the illusion of freedom, stated head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill. The Patriarch, obviously in full support of what President Putin dubbed a "special military operation". That military operation a defence of Ukraine's Russian-speaking communities facing persecution.

 

Police detain a demonstrator during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. Protests against the Russian invasion of Ukraine resumed on Saturday evening, with people taking to the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg for the third straight day despite mass arrests. OVD-Info rights group reported that at least 325 people were detained in 26 Russian cities on Saturday in antiwar protests, nearly half of them in Moscow.(AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)

 

Imprisoned opposition leader Navalny called for protests to take place Sunday, nationwide. And he extended an invitation to launch similar protests across the civilized world, in sympathy with Ukraine's plight. In Kazakhstan's largest city, Almaty, an anti-war protests of several thousand people took place, where videos were posted on social media recording the event. 

These are the courageous people who see right through Vladimir Putin's imperialist war-mongering in a drive of conquest meant to restore the Russian Federation to its former Soviet-era greatness as a power to be reckoned with. For the majority, it seems, the government's propaganda machine has done its job well. VTsIOM, the Russian state polling agency, claims Putin's approval rating rose 6 percentage points to 70 percent in the week to February 27, three days after the invasion began.

Police detain a demonstrator during an action against Russia's attack on Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday, Feb. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)