MOSCOW | At least 1,026 people were arrested Wednesday in Russia during spontaneous demonstrations against the partial mobilization for the offensive in Ukraine, announced in the morning by President Vladimir Putin, according to an NGO.
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According to OVD-Info, an organization specializing in counting arrests, the mobilizations took place in at least 38 cities in the country.
These are the largest protests in Russia since those following the announcement of Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine in late February.
AFP journalists in Moscow saw at least 50 arrests on one of the capital’s central arteries. In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second largest city, a whole bus of arrested people was taken by the police to the center.
The demonstrators chanted “No to war! » and « No mobilization! “.
“Everyone is afraid. I’m for peace and I don’t want to have to shoot. But it’s very dangerous to go out now, otherwise there would have been many more people,” said a protester in Saint Petersburg, Vasily Fedorov, a student who wears a pacifist emblem on his chest.
Alexei Zavarki, 60, regrets the immediate police response to the rallies.
“I came to participate, but it seems that they have already taken everyone on board,” he said, before adding: “I don’t know where we are going, this regime has signed its death warrant, is destroying the youth “.
“Why are you serving Putin? A man seated on his throne for twenty years! shouts another protester in the direction of the police.
“I fear for myself, for my brother, who is 25 years old and has done his military service. It can be called, ”says student Oksana Sidorenko. “Why is my future decided for me? »
In an address to the nation on Wednesday morning, Mr. Putin decreed a partial mobilization of Russian reservists for the offensive in Ukraine and assured that he was ready to use “all means” in his arsenal against the West.