At least 4,300 people were detained in Russia for protesting the war in Ukraine on Sunday alone, according to information from the Interior Ministry.
According to the agency, 1,700 arrests took place in the capital Moscow, 750 in St. Petersburg and more than 1,000 in other cities.
The numbers grew throughout the day at the fastest pace since the start of the war. OVD-info, an NGO working in the area of ​​human rights, has already recorded 4,366 arrests this Sunday, in protests spread across 56 cities in Russia. Until the publication of this report, 12,741 were recorded in the 11 days of conflict.
Protests in Russia have been taking place under heavy police repression. On Saturday (5), the Interior Ministry had already warned that demonstrations not authorized by the government would be repressed and their organizers arrested.
No sooner said than done. Activists opposed to President Vladimir Putin have been posting videos of several arrests in acts across the country on social media. In one, a person in the city of Khabarovsk is filmed shouting “no to war” just before two police officers detain him.
In the same city, another video shows police officers using a loudspeaker to alert a group of protesters: “Respectable citizens, you are participating in an unauthorized public event. We order you to disperse.”
The independent newspaper Novaia Gazeta, where journalist Dmitri Muratov, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021 works, released this Sunday a video that shows five police officers forcibly holding a young man against the ground, in the city of Saint Petersburg.
There are also records of a mural with the image of Putin that was vandalized. Acts were also seen in other countries such as Kazakhstan (former Soviet republic), Germany, England and Spain.
Ukraine’s president, who recently addressed thousands of pro-Kiev protesters in Georgia in an anti-war protest, also expressed support for Russian acts.
“For you, this is not just a fight for peace in Ukraine. It’s a fight for your country,” he said on television, speaking in Russian, not Ukrainian, and therefore addressing the neighboring country directly.
“If you keep silent now, only your poverty will speak for you later. And repression will respond,” he added.
Even in the face of protests, the war in Ukraine appears to have further boosted President Vladimir Putin’s popularity, according to Moscow think tanks.
According to VTsIOM, Putin’s approval rating has risen 6 percentage points since the week the conflict began, reaching 70%. According to the FOM, which does research for the Kremlin, the growth was 7 points, reaching 71%.
He also has the support of the Russian Orthodox Church, which, through a spokeswoman, claimed that Russian values ​​are being put to the test by the West, which in turn offers only an illusion of freedom.
Russian news agency RIA released footage of Kremlin supporters walking through Moscow carrying the letters “Z” and “V”, symbols Russian tanks use in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Russia has been passing laws that increasingly curtail freedom of expression, for example the one that provides for up to 15 years in prison for anyone who spreads “false” news about the war – and who determines what is false is the government itself. .
The country’s communications regulatory agency determined that the war should be called a “special military operation”, not by its name or by variants such as invasion or aggression, which took the traditional radio Eco de Moscow and TV Chuva off the air.
Russia also limited access to a number of foreign websites (including the OVD itself), which caused a reaction from news outlets such as the BBC and Bloomberg, which stopped operating in the country.
In addition, Facebook and Twitter were blocked for good in the country, after days of limited access, and other social networks that kept content considered anti-war by the Kremlin should follow the same route.
“The screws are being fully tightened. Essentially, we are seeing military censorship,” Maria Kuznetsova, a spokeswoman for the OVD, told Reuters.
