Russia-Ukraine live updates: U.S., European leaders consider freezing assets of Russia’s central bank
MOSCOW — Spontaneous mass protests are illegal in Russia, so people across the country got creative Saturday, pouring out their opposition to a war that has shocked liberals and unsettled its comfortable urban class.
Some mounted individual pickets, holding antiwar posters while standing alone on a street outside Russia’s lower house of parliament in Moscow and in city squares around Russia — the only form of protest that was legal until March 2020 when authorities ruled even that out because of the pandemic.
Others adopted the strength-in-numbers philosophy: Hundreds marched in Yekaterinburg chanting “No to war!” according to the Telegram channel Avtozak Live.
And others played a game of cat and mouse with police. Instead of massing in one place — difficult in Moscow or St. Petersburg, given the massive deployments of riot police — many protests were smaller, some just a few dozen people, moving from place to place to avoid arrest.
Even so, more than 325 protesters were arrested in 30 cities and towns across Russia on Saturday, almost half of them in Moscow, according to the rights group OVD-Info. In the three days since the invasion of Ukraine began, more than 2,776 people have been arrested in protests across the country.
One group of anonymous St. Petersburg protesters donned skull masks and hoodies to mount a demonstration in a cemetery, carrying placards with slogans, “Don’t they have enough bodies” and “There are no patriots among the dead,” the Vot Tak news website reported.
Instead of holding a poster, artist Anzhela Aganina wore a traditional Ukrainian shirt and stood in a Moscow street, severed blonde braids and flowers arranged at her feet, according to online news site SotaVision.
In St. Petersburg, police led away one young woman carrying a black tote bag with the words “No war,” the site reported.
