MONTREAL — Demonstrations in support of Ukrainian sovereignty took place here and in over 700 cities in 78 countries around the world.
Across Canada, rallies took place in dozens of cities. This country has 1.4 million people of Ukrainian descent, the world’s second largest Ukrainian emigre population after Russia.
Members of the Russian Canadian Democratic Alliance participated with a large banner. Many of them are supporters of Alexei Navalny, the prominent Putin opponent who died in a Russian Gulag prison a year ago.
Andrii Vietrohon, who came to Canada from Ukraine three years ago, told the Militant about the conditions facing many Russian soldiers that lead them to enlist. “In far away villages, people are poor and they take the money because it means big possibilities for them. They’ve never seen so much cash, ” he said. “When they get to the front, it’s not like TV. They surrender, they desert.”
Svitlana Velychko told the Militant, “Ukraine is so small next to Russia but we can be proud to have stood up for three years.” Like many others at the action, she pointed out that “full scale war started three years ago, but the aggression began in 2014,” when Putin’s forces seized Crimea and then sent Russian soldiers to command pro-Moscow forces fighting to seize the resource-rich Donbas region of southeast Ukraine.
Restore Ukraine’s 1991 borders
Yurii Tukalevsugi, a 19-year-old fast-food worker and student, came from Kyiv to Canada a year and a half ago. He joined the Vancouver rally because “with the latest news about U.S.-Russia negotiations, we need to let others know that we want our country to be as it was in 1991,” he said. “We want peace but with justice.”
Some 2,000 protesters, a majority Ukrainian, marched on the Russian Embassy in London Feb. 22. People from Georgia, Belarus, Lithuania and Poland joined in. A protest the following day was held by Russians for a Democratic Society under the slogan, “This war should end on Ukraine’s terms. We stand in solidarity with Ukraine.”
Andrii Babchuk and Ilulia Sosnovska, Ukrainian residents in the U.K. for a decade, talked to the Militant. The U.S. government “promised to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty. But they kept cutting the weapons they sent,” Babchuk said. “Now they come and say, ‘What else can we take from Ukraine?’”
“My father fought in Afghanistan,” Sosnovska added, during the invasion there by the Soviet Union. “Just like now, many of the soldiers then were non-Russian,” from the oppressed nationalities inside the former Soviet Union.
Thousands more marked the anniversary of the war at a rally in Trafalgar Square, London, Feb. 24.
Some 500 rallied in Sydney, with similar events in other cities around Australia and New Zealand. In Athens, several hundred gathered, chanting “Putin, Trump, Ukraine will not kneel!”
In Paris, the demonstration and rally in solidarity with Ukraine drew around 4,000 people. Representatives of the CGT, CFDT, and Solidaires union confederations marched behind a banner that read, “Trade union support to the Ukrainian resistance — For peace, withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine — Solidarity with all the refugees.” The unions send regular convoys of aid to Ukraine.
Ned Dmytryshyn and Paul Kouri in Vancouver, British Columbia; Catharina Tirsen and Ögmundur Jónsson in London; and Nat London in Paris contributed to this article.