“Cursed be the war”, “Putin is bombing my beautiful Ukraine”… In several cities in France, demonstrators protested on Saturday February 26 against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In Strasbourg, headquarters of the Council of Europe, 3,100 people (according to the prefecture) gathered with Ukrainian flags and placards and chanted “Putin killer” (“Killer Putin”) Where again “Stop the War”. “Putin and all his clique will have to pay the price for this aggression and will have to face an international court”launched to the crowd Borys Tarasyuk, permanent representative of Ukraine to the Council of Europe.
On the Place de la République in Paris, several hundred demonstrators also shouted “Putin assassin”, “Putin terrorist”. Like Liliya Gryshuk, a 29-year-old Ukrainian living in Paris, who decides: people in France “didn’t expect it. We were right: Putin is garbage”. “And no one is going to help us?”, asks the young woman. Among the approximately 250 demonstrators gathered in Montpellier, Edgar Parant, 21, a law student, cowardly about Putin: “What he does today in Kiev, he can do again tomorrow in Warsaw or Bucharest”.
“It seems that people have forgotten the Second World War”, said protester Tatiana Silvanovitch, from Belarus, in Lille. In Marseille, the prefecture counted 700 demonstrators. “My family is bombarded these days, it seems so unlikely”told AFP Ludmila Tonka Fannière, 31, Ukrainian living in France, wearing a wreath of flowers like many other compatriots in the gatherings.
In Saint-Etienne, Grigori, a Ukrainian conductor living in France since 1991, believes that “Europe must go beyond words in the face of the one who will destroy many lives”, Vladimir Poutine, whom he describes as “21st Century Hitler”. Other gatherings took place in Bordeaux, Clermont-Ferrand, Grenoble, Saint-Etienne, Chambéry or even in Puy-en-Velay.