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It’s not that the fear is gone, according to Maria Kuznetsova of OVD-info, a Russian human rights group following arrests and detentions. But the unwritten agreement with the devil was violated. This explains why, after months of inscrutable behavior by the Russian masses, visibly angry people took to the streets in dozens of cities across the country on Wednesday, essentially chanting, “Down with the war.”
The spark of anger flared up shortly after Russian President Putin announced he would call 300,000 men, and not all young, to fight in Ukraine. “For twenty years the authorities have said, ‘let’s not interrupt your personal life. We don’t have high taxes,'” Kuznetsova told Fox News. “But in exchange you don’t talk about human rights violations, wars, repression, electoral fraud ‘”.
For six months, the war in Ukraine seemed a long way off for many Russians. For some it was just a TV show. Now, says Kuznetsova, that war that by law cannot yet be called a war in Russia, has come to people’s doors, to their homes. It is no longer possible, she explains, for the Russians to shake off whatever their government is doing because “it’s not our problem”.
“People are furious. I wouldn’t say they have lost their fear. But now they feel that maybe it’s better to go to the protests (and suffer the consequences) than to die in a war they don’t even believe in or are indifferent to.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council in Yerevan, Armenia.
(Shutterstock)
THE END IF CLOSE TO THE PUTIN WAR AGAINST UKRAINE
1,400 people were detained during the demonstrations on Wednesday and Saturday other protests were called and at the time of writing there had been a few. Kuznetsova appreciates the risk to which protesters were exposed, given that, as she points out, even posting freely critical or ironic statements online can lead to arrest under Russia’s new strict criminal codes.
And those gathered on Wednesday weren’t all caught up in the protests themselves. Authorities, he says, used facial recognition technology to track people down and take them home after the fact. Their software can even see through the masks.
Kuznetsova says that this time the police have been tougher on the detainees, more brutal and in cases called “Nazis and Fascists” the anti-war protesters warning them that they would be sent directly to Donbas. The military subpoenas were served on male inmates, who, incidentally, were less than half of those taken.
“For the first time in ten years, the percentage of women arrested was higher than that of men. At least 51% of all detainees were women. It shows in many ways, it is a protest of wives, mothers, girlfriends and companions. of people who can go to war “.
Russian police officers arrest a man during an unauthorized protest against the military invasion of Ukraine on March 6, 2022 in Moscow, Russia. Russia invaded neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022, its actions have been condemned globally with demonstrations, protests and peace marches taking place in cities around the world.
(Photo by Vladimir Pesnya / Epsilon / Getty Images)
UKRAINE RECEIVES HUNDREDS OF PRISONER PRISONERS FROM RUSSIA TO EXCHANGE PRISONERS WITH BEST ALLY PUTIN
It appears that the fishing net for combat service is wider than initially promised by the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense: men in the reserves with specific military skills and experience.
“We have seen really terrifying videos from Yakutia and Buryatia and other national regions of Russia where men were simply captured by the hundreds in the factories they work in. And they only had a few minutes to say goodbye to their families,” he explained. Kuznetsova.
He said that in larger cities it will be easier for men to hide. And urbanites will be more likely to understand something of their rights, an area that the regime, according to Kuznetsova, has made systematically difficult for Russians to be aware of over the years. In the same way that you have slowly eroded or squeezed protest and blocked the flourishing of a healthy civil society. Kuznetsova hopes the men can escape their summons, saying the authorities don’t care about the individual – it’s not that they want you. Now it’s a numbers game, she explains.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pictured during his regular address to the nation, Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The head of state said we had already reached a strategic turning point and were heading towards our victory. The custom-sized photo is courtesy of the Press Service of the Office of the President of Ukraine.
(Ukrinform / Future Publishing via Getty Images | getty)
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I ask Kuznetsova if he thinks Putin is shocked by the resistance he met at his “partial mobilization” announcement, which many believe will far exceed the officially wanted 300,000 conscripts. And is he worried about the mass flight from the country? Kuznetsova says it’s hard to know, but it’s easy to imagine the Kremlin didn’t expect it. And how large or constant must protest activity become to change the tide of events?
“It’s complicated in Russia,” he says. “For example, in 2012 (when Putin took office for a third term and the Russians protested the irregularities in the vote) hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Moscow and changed some laws, but basically the situation is not radically changed, it depends not only on protests, but also on other forms of social disobedience.
If people start protesting in the workplace, especially if they work for the government, if they start quitting and saying “we’re not going to keep working for propaganda or government, for the military,” that would have a much greater impact. But perhaps protest is something that can initiate other avenues of social disobedience “.
