Two years ago, on September 21, 2014, thousands took to the streets in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other Russian cities to demonstrate against what they said was a covert Russian war in eastern Ukraine.
The independent monitoring group SONAR counted more than 26,000 protesters passing through security checkpoints at the march in Moscow. The march, formally approved by city officials, began at Pushkin Square and coursed through the city center along the four-kilometer route.
Aleksandr Ryklin of the opposition Solidarity movement said the slogan for all of the September 21 marches across Russia was “Putin, enough lying and making war!” Yelena Volkova, a protester in Moscow, said the Russian authorities should “stop this outrageous covert war that they don’t admit” waging. Banners as the Moscow event read: “Putin, I’m sick of your lies,” “Don’t shoot our brothers” and “I don’t want a war with Ukraine.”
Daria Nikolayeva, 55, carried a portrait of Nikolai Krygin, a Russian paratrooper who was killed in a battle in Ukraine. A precedent was set, she said, by Russia’s deployment of military forces to Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula and the subsequent annexation through an illegal referendum.
The march in Moscow was mostly peaceful, despite some Putin supporters throwing raw eggs at the demonstrators and a few minor scuffles; there were no immediate reports of serious violence or arrests.
In St. Petersburg, more than 1,000 people gathered outside of Kazan Cathedral in a rally that was not sanctioned by the local authorities. In Yekaterinburg, more than 100 anti-war protesters gathered in the city center and were jeered and heckled by supporters of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine. In the Siberian city of Barnaul, another unsanctioned demonstration drew an assault against Artyom Kosaretsky, whom by the authorities detained after he help up a sign that read “Siberia against war.”
September 21 is also the annual commemoration of United Nations International Peace Day.
Source: “Thousands march against war in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Opposition grows to war in Ukraine,” RFE/RL Russian Service, The Ukrainian Weekly, September 28. 2014.