Ukraine war: Dozens of demonstrators are shown detaining Russia’s Yekaterinburg
London:
Police on Sunday detained more than 4,300 people in Russia in widespread protests against President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, according to an independent protest watchdog group.
Thousands of protesters chanted “Not for War!” Slogans. and “Shame on you!”, according to videos posted on social media by opposition activists and bloggers.
Dozens of protesters have been detained in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg. There a protester was shown being beaten to the ground by police in riot gear. A mural depicting President Vladimir Putin was defaced in the city.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage and photos on social media. Russia’s interior ministry previously said police had detained some 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St Petersburg and 1,061 in other cities.
The interior ministry said 5,200 people took part in the protests. The OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it had documented the detention of at least 4,366 people in 56 different cities.
“The screws are being tightened completely – essentially we are seeing military censorship,” OVD-Info spokeswoman Maria Kuznetsova said by telephone from Tbilisi.
“We are seeing large protests today, even in Siberian cities where we have rarely seen such a number of arrests.”
The last Russian protest with a similar arrest was in January 2021, when thousands demanded the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was arrested on his return from Germany, where he was recovering from a nerve agent poisoning.
Some Russian state-controlled media gave brief reports about Sunday’s protests, but they were not high in news bulletins.
Russia’s RIA news agency said Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, adjacent to the Kremlin, had been “liberated” by police, who arrested some participants of an unrestricted protest against a military operation in Ukraine.
church support
The RIA also showed footage showing supporters of the Kremlin driving along the Russian flag along the embankment in Moscow and the “Z” and “V” markings used by the Russian military on tanks operating in Ukraine.
Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said Russian values are being tested by the West, which only offer the illusion of excessive consumption and freedom.
Putin, Russia’s paramount leader since 1999, calls the offensive launched on February 24 a “special military operation”. He says it aims to defend Ukraine’s Russian-speaking communities against persecution and to prevent the United States from using Ukraine to threaten Russia.
The West has called their arguments an unfounded excuse for war and imposed sanctions aimed at crippling the Russian economy. The United States, Britain and some other NATO members have supplied weapons to Ukraine.
Navalny on Sunday called for protests against the invasion in Russia and the rest of the world.
According to videos posted on social media, some 2,000 people took part in anti-war protests in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty. Reuters was unable to independently verify the positions.
The crowd chanted “Not for War!” Like shouting. And waving the flag of Ukraine targeted Putin.
Blue and yellow balloons were held in the hands of a statue of Lenin atop the small square where the rally took place.
Russian state polling agency VTsIOM said Putin’s approval rating had risen 6 percentage points to 70% in the week to February 27. The FOM, which provided research for the Kremlin, said their rating had risen 7 percentage points to 71% over the same period.
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