Putin is Finished! Massive Anti-War Protests Break out in Russia despite Brutal Crackdown

Looks like the entire planet (except a few terrorist states like Iran, China) uniting against Putin to sanction Russia will be his last concern… Now Russians are taking it to the streets to protest the unjustified war in Ukraine. Putin is losing support and approval rate nation-wide. There are brutal crackdowns like we’ve never seen before, yet people are protesting anyway! Putin is finished, he will not get relected next time. There are dozens of videos on Twitter showing the brutal crackdown on protesters in Russia but again, we will not include them in the article as Twitter nowadays seems to delete everything in its path so they will just become dead links after a few days. Neither Youtube, nor Twitter are reliable platforms to share videos that will be there for years to come without being deleted.

Putin cracked down on Russians calling for peace tonight, with police and national guard seen dragging protesters away for showing solidarity with Ukraine and other similar demonstrations across the world.

Rarely seen protests against Russian president Vladimir Putin broke out in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, as the global outcry against the Russian strongman grew louder.

Pictures showed officers physically picking up protesters and dragging them away from the demonstrations, which are rare in the authoritarian country which does not tolerate dissent against the Kremlin.

Russian police have detained almost 1,400 people at anti-war protests across Russia after President Vladimir Putin sent troops to invade Ukraine, an independent monitor said Thursday.

‘More than 1,391 people have already been detained in 51 cities,’ said OVD-Info, which tracks arrests at opposition rallies.

More than 700 people have been detained in Moscow and over 340 people in the second-largest city Saint Petersburg, the monitor said.

Earlier, a Russian opposition activist who called for anti-war protests told Reuters that she had been detained by police.

‘I was detained on my way out of the house,’ Marina Litvinovich, the Moscow-based activist, wrote on Telegram. She confirmed her detention separately in a message to Reuters.

Litvinovich called on Russians earlier to gather in protest in various Russian cities on Thursday evening.

Litvinovich also said in a video statement on Facebook: ‘I know that right now many of you feel desperation, helplessness, shame over Vladimir Putin’s attack on the friendly nation of Ukraine. But I urge you not to despair.’

‘We, the Russian people, are against the war Putin has unleashed. We don’t support this war, it is being waged not on our behalf,’ she added.

Earlier today, more than 150 senior Russian officials signed an open letter condemning Putin’s invasion as ‘an unprecedented atrocity’ and warning of ‘catastrophic consequences’.

The deputies said they were ‘convinced’ Russian citizens do not back the war and blamed Putin ‘personally’ for ordering troops into Ukraine in an attack ‘for which there is no and cannot be justification’.

Across Europe and the rest of the world, anti-war activists took to their own streets and gathered outside Russian embassies including those in London, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Oslo, Riga, as well as further afield in Tokyo, making their voices heard. Sydney also saw furious protesters calling for an end to the conflict.

Demonstrations were held overnight before war was declared by Russia, and continued into Thursday as Russian tanks rolled towards Kiev. There have been reports of intense fighting and casualties on both sides.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday also called on Ukrainian to ‘go out’ and ‘protest against this war’, after urging Russians to do the same earlier this week in a bid to prevent the invasion.

‘We have severed diplomatic relations with Russia. For all those who have not yet lost their conscience in Russia, it is time to go out and protest against the war with Ukraine,’ he said today.

Across Europe, people were pictured with placards and megaphones outside Russian embassies, calling for Putin to pull back from Ukraine and stop the war.

A growing group of Ukrainians and Russians united outside of the Russian embassy in Kensington, London, also waving the Ukrainian flag. Last night, a large group gathered there ahead of the invasion.

Another photo taken outside Russia’s diplomatic HQ in Britain showed demonstrators with placards that took aim aim at Putin, including one which depicted him with a Hitler-like moustache.

In Berlin, demonstrators waved Ukrainian flags in front of the Brandenburg Gate on Thursday. Last night, the iconic arch was lit up in Ukraine’s colours.

In Paris, authorities lit City Hall in the same colours to also show their support.

In Stockholm, Sweden, a large group of people were seen in the snow waving the blue and yellow flag of Ukraine while shouting at Russia’s embassy. Their placards called for the end of the war, with one man holding a sign that read ‘hands of Ukraine.’ Another said: ‘Ukraine is forever.’

‘This is the most shameful and terrible day in my life. I even was not able to go to work. My country is an aggressor. I hate Putin. What else should be done to make people open their eyes?’ Yekaterina Kuznetsova, 40-year-old engineer who joined a demonstration in St. Petersburg, told AP.

Meanwhile, activist Tatyana Usmanova said she didn’t believe a war between Russia and Ukraine would break out, and thought it was a bad dream when she woke up to the news of Vladimir Putin ordering an attack.

‘For some reason I woke up at 5:30 and decided to refresh Twitter,’ Usmanova, an opposition activist in Moscow, wrote on Facebook.

‘At first I thought I was just dreaming about waking up. I even walked around the room and touched things around me to make sure it’s all real. ‘

Usmanova called the attack ‘a disgrace that will be forever with us now.’

‘It will become a huge trauma for the entire nation, which we will spend years coping with,’ she wrote. ‘I want to ask Ukrainians for forgiveness. We didn’t vote for those who unleashed the war.’

Dozens of posts similar to Usmanova’s came pouring in Thursday, condemning Moscow’s most aggressive actions since the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.

Putin described the attack as a ‘special military operation’ to protect civilians in eastern Ukraine from ‘genocide’ – a false claim the U.S. had predicted he would make as a pretext for an invasion.

As sirens were blasting in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, and large explosions were heard there and in other cities, Russians were signing open letters and online petitions demanding the Kremlin stop the violence, which Ukrainian forces reported had killed more than 40 soldiers and wounded dozens.

‘Public opinion is in shock, people are in shock,’ political analyst Abbas Gallyamov told The Associated Press.

One petition, started by a prominent human rights advocate, Lev Ponomavyov, garnered over 150,000 signatures within several hours of being launched and 289,000 by the end of the day.

More than 250 journalists put their names on an open letter decrying the aggression. Another one was signed by some 250 scientists, while by 194 municipal council members in Moscow and other cities signed a third.

‘I’m worried about the people very much, I’m worried to tears,’ said Zoya Vorobey, a resident of Korolyov, a town outside Moscow, told the AP, her voice cracking.

‘I’ve been watching television since this morning, every minute, to see if anything changes. Unfortunately, nothing (changes) so far.’

Several Russian celebrities and public figures, including those working with state TV, spoke out against the attack as well.

Yelena Kovalskaya, director of a state-funded Moscow theater, announced on Facebook she was quitting her job, saying ‘it’s impossible to work for a killer and get paid by him’.

Human rights advocates warned of a new wave of repression on dissent in Russia as protests got underway.

‘There will be new (criminal) cases involving subverters, spies, treason, prosecution for antiwar protests, there will be detentions of journalists and bloggers, those who authored critical posts on social media, bans on investigations of the situation in the army and so on,’ prominent human rights advocate Pavel Chikov wrote on Facebook.

‘It is hard to say how big this new wave will be, given that everything has been suppressed already.’

Russia’s official line in the meantime remained intransigent. Speaker of the upper house of parliament, Valentina Matviyenko charged that those who spoke out against the attack were only caring about their ‘momentary problems’.

State TV painted the attack in line with what Putin said in his televised address announcing it.

Russia 1 TV host Olga Skabeyeva called it an effort ‘to protect people in Donbas from a Nazi regime’ and said it was ‘without exaggeration, a crucial junction in history.’

Berlin, which represented the front line during the Cold War until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, was sending a clear signal for a free and sovereign Ukraine, said its government.

‘We are showing our solidarity with the people of Ukraine, the many Berliners with Ukrainian roots but also with the many Russians who want peace in Russia and Ukraine,’ Berlin Mayor Franziska Giffey said in a statement.

‘They all want nothing more than an end to the escalation and a peaceful settlement to this threatening conflict,’ she added.

Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, also a candidate in France’s upcoming presidential election, said earlier on Wednesday ‘once again, the spectre of war looms on Europe’s doorstep.’

Ukrainian national Ela Czuruk fought back tears as she told of her fears for family back home during a protest outside the Russian Embassy in London on Thursday.

Ela called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the invasion immediately and stop any further bloodshed.

She said: ‘We are deeply concerned because our families are back there, so we came to the Russian embassy to express our concern, to show our support to Ukrainians who are back home.

‘We don’t want anyone to die. We don’t want anymore casualties. We don’t want any more deaths.’

Russian national Anna, who also attended the protest, said: ‘As a Russia citizen, I am here to protest against these actions. This morning I woke up with tears in my eyes. I don’t know what to do, but I really want to do something.’

Ukrainians living in the U.K. and activists also gathered outside Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Downing Street office Thursday, singing the Ukrainian national anthem.

Natalia Ravlyuk, who helped organize the protest, said they wanted the ‘toughest sanctions and total isolation of Russia now.’

‘We … feel betrayed by democratic states because we have been talking about this war for eight years,’ she said. ‘They just need to wake up and stop Putin now.’

Across the border in Scotland, Ukrainian people and their supporters protested outside the Russian embassy in Edinburgh, also waving the blue and yellow for Ukraine.

Protests were also seen in countries bordering Ukraine, who will also be concerned about Putin’s future ambitions of expansion in the region.

In Poland’s Warsaw capital, people waves Ukrainian and European Union flags, as well as placards pleading for peace in the country with which it shares a south-eastern border.

The protests came as peers heard that the Russian people ‘don’t deserve’ President Vladimir Putin as their leader.

As the Lords were updated on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Labour’s Lord Robertson of Port Ellen said: ‘I am sure I wasn’t the only one who woke up this morning to listen to the news who wasn’t reminded of that day, that similar day in 1968, when we woke up to hear the news that Soviet tanks had crushed out the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia.’

The former Nato secretary-general added: ‘In May of 2002 when I chaired the Nato-Russia summit with President Putin as an equal member around that table I thought that finally I had exorcised the ghosts of 1968.

‘I stood only hours later on a platform at the press conference standing beside President Putin when he said these words ‘Ukraine is an independent sovereign nation state and it will choose its own path to peace and security’.

‘Now remarkably the same man says that Ukraine does not exist, it is a state that does not deserve to be a state, that it’s democracy will be crushed again.

‘The leader of the Russian people – to whom we owe so much for our own liberty today – has been led by somebody who is taking his country down the road to pariah status. The Russian people don’t deserve that.’

Government minister Baroness Evans of Bowes Park agreed with Lord Roberston, and said President Putin was ‘never serious’ about diplomacy.

Central European countries braced on Thursday for the arrival of refugees fleeing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with Poland setting up reception points on its border and Hungary and Slovakia planning to send troops to manage the likely influx.

The countries on the European Union’s eastern flank were all once part of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact and are now members of NATO. Among them, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania all share land borders with Ukraine.

NATO member Lithuania, which has borders with Russian ally Belarus and Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, has declared a state of emergency effective early Thursday afternoon due to the situation in Ukraine.

The decree signed Thursday by Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda steps up border protection. It gives authorities, among other things, the right to check and inspect vehicles, persons and luggage in the border area.

Lithuania also borders fellow NATO and European Union members Poland and Latvia.

Protesters also took to the streets of Riga, Latvia today. One person held up an image of Putin made to look like Adolf Hitler, drawing comparisons to the Russian leader’s actions and those seen during the Second World War.

Last night, many held placards that mocked and criticised Russia’s president for his aggressive posturing, while many others pleaded for war to be avoided – despite the worrying signs that a conflict could be on the way.

In Berlin, demonstrators waved Ukrainian flags in front of the Brandenburg Gate, which was lit up in the country’s colours.

In Copenhagen, scores held an enormous Ukrainian flag aloft as others massed with banners in front of the Russian embassy.

In Paris, the city hall was lit up with the yellow and blue of the Ukrainian flag as the city’s mayor Anne Hidalgo stood outside it flanked by the Ukrainian ambassador to France Vadym Omelchenko.

In Tokyo, children were pictured holding banners that read ‘Stand with Ukraine’ as others called for the world to ‘Stop Putin’.

Images also showed similar demonstrations in other cities, including Stockholm in Sweden, Kathmandu in Nepal and Warsaw in Poland.

There were reportedly more than 1,000 protesters at last night’s demonstration in London. Some were heard shouting ‘Old man take your meds!’ and ‘Putin hands off Ukraine’.

They also held other signs aloft, including one that read ‘Love Ukraine’ and another saying ‘Ukrainians will resist’.

One woman held a placard that read ‘Putin kills’ alongside a mocked up radioactive warning sign – an apparent reference to Russia’s huge stockpile of nuclear weapons.

Source

RELATED ARTICLES

• After Fooling the People to Reelect Putin, Russia now announces More Cannon Fodder Mobilizations
• Russia Fires Barrage of North Korean Missiles at Kyiv After US Visit
• Ex-Wagner fighters Join Free Russia Army's Battle to Liberate Russia from Putin Occupation
• Hungary Becomes First EU Country to Congratulate Putin for Winning the 'Elections'
• Putin says NATO Troops are already in Ukraine But Russia is Still Winning