Wo police officers in Germany should prevent protests against the Putin regime? Are they restricting the right of opponents of the Russian war of aggression to demonstrate through their actions? And are they taking action against people whose rights they are supposed to be protecting? These are questions that Elwira Niewiera has been asking herself for a few weeks.
The 46-year-old documentary filmmaker, who comes from Poland and has lived in Germany for almost three decades, sympathizes with the liberation struggle in Ukraine. From her work she knows Ukrainian soldiers who fight at the front. That’s why she learned first-hand about mass murders, kidnappings and rapes by the Russian attackers, she tells the FAZ. And she sees it as her task to raise her voice against the war and the Putin regime.
On May 9, around 6 p.m., Niewiera went to the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptow district with her Ukrainian friend Oksana Lytvynenko. It was Victory Day, as it is called in Russia, commemorating the surrender of Nazi Germany in 1945. In Russia it is celebrated with great effort as a national holiday, it is now also used for war propaganda.
Around 150 people had gathered at the memorial, most of whom were Russians and apparently also supporters of the Putin regime. The police were supposed to enforce a ban on Russian or Soviet flags and symbols at demonstrations or commemorations that day. The Berlin police originally also wanted to ban the display of Ukrainian flags, but the Berlin Administrative Court accepted an appeal against it, allowing Ukrainian flags.
The crowd reacted aggressively
Videos available to the FAZ show what happened to the two women at the memorial: to demonstrate against the Russian war of aggression, both women stand on the stairs leading to the memorial and hold up posters. They read: “Russia is a Terrorist State”. On the poster, blood is dripping from the two red letters SS in “Russia”.
Niewiera is higher up, holding up two posters, one in each hand. A woman slaps a poster out of her hand, but Niewiera grabs it again. Lytvynenko has tied a Ukrainian flag around her neck, sings the Ukrainian national anthem loudly and holds up her sign with both hands. The crowd reacted aggressively to the two women, chanting “Rossiya! Rossija!”, “Russia! Russia”.
A blond woman with a ponytail wants to tear the sign away from Lytvynenko. She slaps her neck with her hand. Then she asks Lytvynenko in Russian to leave immediately, grabs her flag scarf and chokes her. Lytvynenko calls the police, the Russian calls Lytvynenko a “traitor”. One man calls the Ukrainian a “slut” in Russian, another calls the women “fascists”.
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