Anti-war sentiment grows in Russia despite govt crackdown
Source: AP
By DASHA LITVINOVA and VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
MOSCOW (AP) — As Russian troops were closing in on the Ukrainian capital, more and more Russians spoke out Saturday against the invasion, even as the government’s official rhetoric grew increasingly harsher.
Street protests, albeit small, resumed in the Russian capital of Moscow, the second-largest city of St. Petersburg and other Russian cities for the third straight day, with people taking to the streets despite mass detentions on Thursday and Friday. According to OVD-Info, rights group that tracks political arrests, at least 460 people in 34 cities were detained over anti-war protests on Saturday, including over 200 in Moscow.
Open letters condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept pouring, too. More than 6,000 medical workers put their names under one on Saturday; over 3,400 architects and engineers endorsed another while 500 teachers signed a third one. Similar letters by journalists, municipal council members, cultural figures and other professional groups have been making the rounds since Thursday.
A prominent contemporary art museum in Moscow called Garage announced Saturday it was halting its work on exhibitions and postponing them “until the human and political tragedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased.”
Police officers detain a woman in St. Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. Shocked Russians turned out by the thousands Thursday to decry their country's invasion of Ukraine as emotional calls for protests grew on social media. Some 1,745 people in 54 Russian cities were detained, at least 957 of them in Moscow. (AP Photo/Dmitri Lovetsky)
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-vladimir-putin-business-dmitry-medvedev-global-trade-858a23b058209e5662ee59d768b615bd
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