The third anniversary of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was marked in a careful but significant way in cities across Russia. Despite public opposition to the war being forbidden by law, with many protesters hit with significant sentences and rough treatment, there were numerous small demonstrations and flowers laid at memorials to Ukrainian writers and Russian dissidents, from the Ural Mountains to the biggest cities, the Moscow Times and other media reported.
In the Siberian city of Perm a group picket against the war was held. Elsewhere individual protests spoke for thousands of others, keeping the flame of resistance burning. Flowers were left at the memorial for Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko in St. Petersburg.
Flowers and a sign reading “We mourn” were left at the monument to Ukrainian writer Lesya Ukrainka in Moscow. A girl there was filmed opening her coat to unveil an anti-war T-shirt that read, “24.02.2022. February is years long!” Also in Moscow, flowers were left near the Solovetsky Stone, a monument to Soviet victims of political repression.
Lyudmila Vasilyeva, 83, a survivor of the World War II siege of Leningrad by the German imperialist army, staged a spirited solo anti-war protest in St. Petersburg, arguing with authorities, with a placard reading, “Stop the war!” Last June she ran for mayor of the city as an opponent of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Thousands of supporters flocked to her campaign headquarters to volunteer before she was ruled off the ballot.
Moscow’s attacks against civilians in Ukraine are also rife and deadly in Kursk, the one region of the Russian Federation that was conquered and has been held by Ukrainian forces for months. The Washington Post interviewed several Russian citizens, many elderly, as they received lifesaving treatment in a Ukrainian medical facility after being injured by Russian shelling in Kursk. They all expressed their gratitude to the Ukrainian troops and doctors.
One of them, named Ludmila, said she heard a Russian plane overhead Feb. 9, then “we were under the roof,” which collapsed from a direct bomb blast. Her son ran to ask for help from Ukrainian soldiers stationed there, who pulled her from the ruins and took her to Ukraine for medical care. Ludmila, who has pins and braces in her legs to help them set, said that without “the Ukrainian soldiers there, we do not know what would be with us.”