DThrough the fog of surprise, disbelief and state TV stories about a spot-on “military special operation in Donbass”, Russia is beginning to realize that it is in fact at war with Ukraine. The first major protests – at least according to the current standards, which are characterized by harsh repression – took place on Thursday.
In Moscow, dozens of people first came to Pushkin Square in the center of the capital in the evening and chanted “No to the war”. Masked police officers soon arrested a number of them and did not allow them to gather. Such events are subject to approval, but are not permitted.
As a result, several columns with probably hundreds of demonstrators marched through the city center, again with the slogan “No to war”. The police soon reported that 600 people had been arrested in Moscow alone, while the human rights activists from “OWD-Info” had already counted 660 people arrested at this point. The human rights organization, which has recently been harassed as a “foreign agent,” later reported 957 arrested in Moscow alone. Victims reported that they had been denied access to lawyers.
Well-known sociologist among those arrested
In Saint Petersburg, where “OWD-Info” counted 428 people arrested, video footage shows police officers dragging demonstrators out of a metro station. According to “OWD-Info”, more than 1,700 people were arrested during actions in 52 Russian cities. Most of those affected are released with “protocols” after a few hours at the police station, and many then have to pay fines or are arrested for a few days.
However, activists have also been sentenced to camp imprisonment for “repeated violations of the right to assembly”. In addition, there may be criminal proceedings for attacks on security forces, which are regularly punished with imprisonment even if no damage or injury occurs. There is also a risk of abuse.
In Moscow on Thursday evening it happened to the sociologist Grigory Yudin. He teaches at the private university for social and economic sciences known as “Shaninka”, whose rector, Sergei Zuyev, was arrested in October in a non-transparent criminal case and has been held in custody since November despite a heart condition. According to “OWD-Info”, Yudin was beaten at the police station after his arrest at the anti-war campaign. He fell to the ground and lost consciousness. Initially, the police did not want to let first responders come to him, and later Judin was taken to a hospital.
Yudin is one of the most prominent critical voices left in Russia. “In wartime, the boundary between critics and traitors disappears,” he had written on Wednesday in anticipation of the order to attack, “and you don’t do much with traitors.” Article for the project “Open Democracy” Yudin emphasizes that there are “no sanctions that could force Putin to renounce Ukraine”.
Judin sees the dilemma in the fact that “Putin believes in only one instrument – gross military strength, and he only relies on it”. Because the President, in 22 years in power, has not been able to offer European states anything to make NATO membership unattractive for them, and because of the “very real threat of Russian aggression” the alliance has only made sense again. “Under Putin, NATO grew stronger than ever.”
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