Anti-War Demonstrations Begin In Russia

Russians gathered around their country yesterday in protest of Russian thug Vladimir Putin's unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine. An estimated 1,300 of the demonstrators were detained by security forces as Russian citizens expressed dismay over Putin's brutal invasion of a "brotherly country": 

"Thousands of protesters took to the streets and squares of Russian cities on Thursday to protest President Vladimir V. Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine, only to be met with heavy police presence.

Many Russians, like people across the world, were shocked to wake up and learn that Mr. Putin had ordered a full-scale assault against a country often referred to as a 'brotherly nation.'  At the protests, many people said they felt depressed and broken by the news of Russian military action.

In Moscow, the police blocked off access to the Pushkinskaya Square in the city center, after opposition activists called people to come there. Police officers dispersed even the smallest groups of protesters, ordering them to clear the area through loudspeakers.

A few hundred people, mostly young, flanked the streets leading to the square, some chanting 'No to war!' and unfurling a Ukrainian flag. The police detained more than 600 people in the city, according to OVD Info, a rights group that tallies arrests.  [snip]

In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, riot police officers rounded up at least 327 people who came to the Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main thoroughfare.

Wearing helmets and in full gear, they hit people and pushed protesters to the ground, according to video footage from the scene. Many people came out in other Russian cities, including in Yekaterinburg, a major city in the Ural Mountains, where protesters chanted 'No to war!' in front of a Lenin monument."  (our emphasis)

The numbers aren't large, and Putin will work to see that they remain manageable and brutally so. His fear is that his action against Ukraine, in addition to impacting the lives of ordinary Russians via sanctions, will promote unrest at home as Russians see images of dead "brotherly" Ukrainians and bodies of Russian soldiers coming home for burial. The "Maidan Revolution" in Ukraine that toppled his corrupt puppet Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, triggered Putin's unlawful annexation of Ukrainian Crimea and occupation of sections of the Donbass. Putin's security forces would repress a "Maidan" in Russia with all their might, but we can always be hopeful that Putin's blundering invasion will be the beginning of the end for him.

BONUS: The European Union announced that they will freeze all assets of Putin and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov within their 27 member states. Biden needs to apply extreme sanctions to Putin now.

BONUS II: Russia's space program director Dmitry Rogozin suggested Russia might crash the International Space Station into the U.S. or Europe over sanctions. He should be sanctioned, too.

(photo: Demonstrators in Moscow carrying sign "Ukraine-Peace, Russia-Freedom". Dmitry Serebryakov / AP)