Russian invasion of Ukraine/Russians against the war

вам ещё нужна эта война? — Do you still need this war?

“ Today, Russian President Vladimir Putin started a war with Ukraine. Pain, anger and shame are three words that reflect our attitude to what is happening. This invasion will bring grief to the families of thousands of people in Ukraine and Russia. This is a large-scale war in which other states will also be involved. Since the Cuban Missile Crisis, the world has never been so close to a global catastrophe.

We, as independent Russian journalists, declare that we are against the massacre initiated by the Russian leadership.

We promise that we will be honest about what is happening while we have this opportunity. We wish resilience and strength to the people of Ukraine who are resisting aggression, and to all in Russia who are now trying to resist this militaristic madness.

We also appeal to those who are trying to rationalise the motivations for the war, justifying its start by the need to protect themselves from NATO and “Ukrainian Nazism”. War is no longer just an argument on television and in kitchens. It has been made flesh. There are tanks in Kharkiv. And in a real war, people always die. We hope that death will not come to your house. But, of this, there can be no certainty.

No to war.

— No to War “Novaya leads a coalition of 25 independent media outlets, “Syndicate 100”. Novaya unequivocally condemns President Putin’s unprovoked and horrific war against Ukraine. We penned a joint statement calling for an end to this barbaric war”

Russians protesting against the russian invasion of Ukraine

• Libertarian Party of Russia/Truth and freedom are on the side of peace

• Protests in Russia resume as government seeks to quash antiwar voices

• We, Russians, demand complete withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory! Let us stand together and show the world that Russians publicly condemn the Kremlin’s actions. Join the anti-war protest in your city on February 24th, 2023. #notowar

• Free Russia Foundation is an international organization supporting civil society and democratic development in Russia. #NoToWar.

• Wiping off the blood: To oppose Ukraine war, Russians adopt new national flag

• Thousands Detained At Anti-War Protests Across Russia

• 92-year-old Russian woman says that the country is brainwashed into hating the world and that this is why the Bucha Massacre happened. [1]

Saint Petersburg

• ‘Indifference is our main problem’ Artist and activist Yelena Osipova on Russia’s war against Ukraine and her 20 years of protesting Putin’s regime

Protests abroad

• ‘Russia’s Rambo,’ once a Putin favorite, says he’d now fight for Ukraine and feels ‘nothing but hatred’ for his home country
  • Russian actor may face criminal charges following his interview with Novaya Gazeta Europe

• Mikhail Khodorkovsky, “Stop saying that the war in Ukraine is being waged by Russia and the Russian people. It’s a war of Putin and his regime. The narrative that Russia as a whole is at war benefits Putin and is not true.” (thread) (pdf)

• Why Aren’t Russians Abroad Doing More to Protest the War?

Serbia

• December 24, 2022: В Белграде сегодня тоже митинг антивоенный, уже сбился какой по счету

Georgia

• October 23, 2022: Protest by Russians in #Tbilisi, chanting “no to war”, happening today on Rustaveli in front of First School, went on for two minutes or more. Speeches, etc., too, many placards in support of #Ukraine. #Georgia [2]

• December 24, 2022: Russians protesting against the war and Putin’s regime [3]

Armenia

• November 22, 2022: Russians in Yerevan, #Armenia are protesting against #Putin and are calling for Armenia to leave Collective Security Treaty Organization (#CSTO) - Putin’s worthless attempt at creating his own NATO. Members: Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Armenia, Russia (CSTO)

United States

Seattle

• Protests at Seattle Russian Cultural Center WWII Victory Day Celebration (Протестующие в Сиэтле 9 мая: «Романтизация войны неприемлема»)

Russians counter-protesting at pro-war rallies

Kremlintarianism/Rage Against the War Machine Rally

• Russian Support for Putin’s War Falling Fast as Economic Fallout Bites—Poll

Russians arrested for protesting the russian invasion of Ukraine

• Olesya Krivtsova, Олеся Кривцова, Russian Teenager Must Remain Under House Arrest Until Trial Over Online Posts
  • 19-year-old faces 5 years in prison in Russia
  • “She’s not a patriot” and classmates have her arrested: 19 year old risks 5 years in prison in Russia, January 9, 2023
  • https://twitter.com/BBCSteveR/status/1625540378144423938

• Police arrest 4 Moscow residents honoring Dnipro missile strike victims with flowers at the monument of Lesya Ukrainka, one of 🇺🇦 best known poets.

• Alexandra Skochilenko, A Russian musician mounts a modest antiwar protest and pays the price Alexandra Skochilenko faces 10 years in prison, bullying and abuse as Moscow makes examples of small-time activists (archive)
  • She Posted Anti-War Stickers in A Russian Grocery Store. She Now Faces Up to 10 Years in Prison.

• Olesya & Alexei Ovchinnikov: #Russia: Family arrested at a #Krasnodar restaurant “Na Drovoi” for having an anti-war conversation. Person overheard Olesya & Alexei Ovchinnikov’s table conversation and called the police. Police arrested them at the restaurant and took away their 9-year-old child.

• Maksim Lypkan: Those who mock Russians’ passivity under Putin’s dictatorship might try to imagine themselves in the place of 18-year old antiwar activist Maksim Lypkan.

• Anastasia Chernysheva: Ukraine war: Russian baker fined for pro-peace cakes

• Dmitry Skurikhin, 2.5 years: https://twitter.com/rshereme/status/1684904014662541312

• Sergei Trofimov https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1710264558533710011

• https://twitter.com/O__Honcharuk/status/1503735327130857475

Russians sentenced for protesting the russian invasion of Ukraine

Masha Moskaleva’s drawing. Her father was sentenced to 2 years prison for it.

• Vladimir Kara-Murza, 25 years: A Russian court sentenced Vladimir Kara-Murza, a longtime opposition politician and @washingtonpost Opinions contributor, to 25 years in prison on charges of treason for criticizing 🇷🇺 war on Ukraine.
  • Russia: Kara-Murza’s continued detention threatens his life and violates his human rights, says UN expert

• Ilya Yashin, 8.5 years: One of Russia’s most prominent opposition figures, Ilya Yashin, has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years for spreading “fake news” about the country’s military. One of few Kremlin critics to stay in Russia after it invaded Ukraine, Yashin continued to speak out against the war. He was arrested after he condemned suspected Russian war crimes in the Ukrainian town of Bucha., December 9, 2022
  • https://twitter.com/RG_Horvath/status/1669672589579681794
  • https://twitter.com/IlyaYashin/status/1669610185860456449

• Alexei Gorinov, 7 years: A Moscow councillor has been jailed for seven years for speaking out against Russia’s war in Ukraine - in what is said to be the first full jail term under new laws targeting dissent. Alexei Gorinov, 60, was arrested in April after he was filmed criticising the invasion in a city council meeting., July 8, 2022

• Maria Ponomarenko, 6 years: Russian journalist Maria Ponomarenko jailed for highlighting Mariupol killings, February 25, 2023
  • Journalist, Maria Ponomarenko, warns Putin his regime is on verge of collapse. She has been jailed for 6 years for posting on social media about a deadly attack by Russian warplanes on a theatre in Ukraine. The court in Barnaul in Siberia found her guilty of spreading fake news.

• Oleg Orlov, 2.5 years [4] [5]

• Alexey Moskalev, 2 years (Masha Moskaleva): Russian police arrest father charged with ‘discrediting’ army after daughter drew anti-war picture at school
  • ‘The FSB said I’m raising my daughter wrong’ A single father faces felony charges after his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school
  • Masha, a 12 year old Russian girl, drew a picture in support of Ukraine. The regime’s authorities beat up Masha’s father, stole his savings, detained him and sent the girl to an orphanage.
  • The father —to jail, his daughter —orphanage [6]
  • Russian prosecutors yesterday called for Alexei Moskalev to be sent to prison for 2 years for discrediting the Russian army. His crime? Well, nothing, but his daughter drew an anti-war picture at school. She has now been sent to a children’s home.
  • Remember the case of a Russian girl who was taken to an orphanage and her father indicted just because she made an anti-war drawing? This is the epilogue of that horror story. The father was sentenced to two years in prison but escaped and his daughter remains in captivity.
  • The Putin regime’s true family values on display: Alexey Moskalev, who was charged with felony “discrediting” the military after his 6th-grader daughter submitted an anti-war drawing to art class, has been sentenced to 2 years in prison. His daughter will remain in an orphanage.
  • HOWEVER! it seems Alexey Moskalev ran away (he was under house arrest), so it seems he’s not going to prison after all, unless he’s caught or turns himself in.
  • Russian whose daughter drew anti-war picture gets two years’ jail but flees
  • Russian whose daughter drew anti-war picture flees jail term
  • They are sending the girl who is a fan of Zelensky and who drew the pictures against the war to... Crimea.
  • Alexei Moskalev escaped from strict house arrest the night before the verdict was handed down. He was captured soon after in Minsk and extradited to Russia a week ago. His lawyer has not been informed where he is. At the moment, no one knows.

• Sasha Skochilenko, 7 years: “A St Petersburg court has sentenced Russian artist Sasha Skochilenko to seven years in prison for putting up anti-war stickers – one of the most draconian “fake news” cases since Putin invaded Ukraine. “Even though I’m behind bars, I’m more free than you,” she told the court.”

• Viktor Pivovarov, fine: “A court in Russian Kuban has fined 86-year-old priest Viktor Pivovarov 150,000 rubles in a criminal case for "discrediting" the Russian military."”

• Azat Miftakhov, 4 years: “The FSB is the Main Terrorist”

Russians sentenced for refusing to participate in the russian invasion of Ukraine

• Marsel Kandarov, 5 years: Russian Soldier Jailed for 5 Years for Refusing To Fight in Ukraine

• Two mobilized who refused to go to war were sentenced to three years in prison.

• Denis Vasilyev, 2 years [7]

Russians detained and tortured for refusing to participate in the russian invasion of Ukraine

• Another illegal detention site for Russian soldiers who are refusing to fight has been identified in the occupied Luhansk region of Ukraine. It is the 15th such site known to have been established. The newly identified site is likely to be linked to an FSB torture facility. (thread) (pdf)

Russians tried in absentia for opposing the russian invasion of Ukraine

“ The war against Ukraine is the most destructive and dehumanizing thing that has happened to Russia in recent memory. Without reason or cause, my country invaded the territory of our neighbor that we used to consider a brotherly state. It sent out tanks to seize the Ukrainian capital. It sent planes to bomb Ukrainian cities. It ruined countless human lives. It razed dozens of cities and settlements to the ground. It occupied Ukrainian lands and called them its own with utter disregard for international law.

This war has no justification. Its horror and senselessness are too obvious. But the people who ordered the invasion —Vladimir Putin and his close circle —cannot back down as they are the real criminals and they are afraid of being punished for their crime.

— Dmitry Glukhovsky, “When Governments Make Immoral Laws, it Is Our Duty to Disobey Them”

Russians tortured to death for protesting the russian invasion of Ukraine

• An awful story - an activist who was spreading antiwar leaflets was captured in Rostov, beaten, tortured, and electrocuted. Yesterday he was killed. Inside the detention center. Tortured to death.
  • Anatoly Berezikov: Russian Anti-War Activist Dies in Police Custody, Lawyer Says
  • https://twitter.com/4freerussia_org/status/1669767510302810112

Russians killing themselves rather than participating in the russian invasion of Ukraine

• Sergei Gridin: In the Moscow region, a conscript committed suicide because he did not want to fight in Ukraine The conscript left a suicide note. He said that the command wanted to send him to Ukraine. He asked his commander not to send him to the war, after which they started mocking him.
  • Sergei Gridin, a 20-year-old conscript from the Komi Republic in northwestern Russia, has committed suicide after refusing to be deployed to Ukraine. “I have decided to die without other people’s blood on my hands," read Gridin’s suicide note.
  • https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-conscript-sergei-gridin-reportedly-kills-himself-to-avoid-ukraine-war
  • https://theins.ru/en/news/259409

• Ivan Petunin: The Russian rapper Ivan Petunin has committed suicide. He recorded a message to his fans about mobilization. He said he refuses to murder another man. He said Putin has taken all Russian men captive, leaving them with 3 choices: becoming a murderer, going to prison or suicide.
  • https://www.outlookindia.com/international/russian-rapper-kills-himself-to-avoid-serving-in-war-against-ukraine-news-227542

Russians fighting on the Ukrainian side

• Freedom for Russia Legion

• «Неважно, кто какой национальности, важно —кто агрессор». Исповедь бойцов «Русского добровольческого корпуса» —“Ethnicity is irrelevant, it’s the aggressor’s identity that matters.” Confessions of Russian Volunteer Corps fighters

Russians KIA fighting on the Ukrainian side

“ My name is Dmitry Petrov, and if you read these lines, then most likely I died fighting against the Putin’s invasion of #Ukraine.

I am a member of the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists (BOAK), and I will still remain this after my death.

The BOAK is our brainchild, born of our faith in an organized struggle. We managed to carry it on different sides of state borders. I tried my best to contribute to the victory over dictatorship and to bring the social revolution closer.

As an anarchist, revolutionary and Russian, I found it necessary to take part in the armed resistance of the Ukrainian people against Putin’s occupiers. I did this for justice, for defense of the Ukrainian society and for liberation of my country, Russia, from oppression.

For the sake of all the people who are deprived of their dignity and the opportunity to breathe freely by the vile totalitarian system created in #Russia and #Belarus. Another important sense to participate in this war is to approve internationalism by example.

In the days when the deadly imperialism awakes, as a response, a wave of nationalism and contempt for Russians, I argue by word and deed: there are no “bad peoples”. All peoples have the same grief – greedy and power-hungry rulers.

It was not just my individual decision and step. It was a continuation of our collective strategy aimed at creating sustainable structures and guerrilla combat confrontation with the tyrannical regimes of our region.

My dear friends, I apologize to all those I hurt with my leaving. I appreciate your warmth very much. However, I firmly believe that the struggle for justice, against oppression and injustice is one of the most worthy meanings that humans can fill their life with.

And this struggle requires sacrifices, up to the complete self-sacrifice. The best memory for me is if you continue actively struggle, overcoming personal ambitions and unnecessary harmful strife. If you continue to fight actively to achieve a free society based on equality and solidarity. For you and for me and for all our comrades. Risk, deprivation and sacrifice on this path are our constant companions. But be sure – they are not in vain.

— Dmitry Petrov, “My name is Dmitry Petrov, and if you read these lines, then most likely I died fighting against the Putin’s invasion of #Ukraine.”

Anti-war action

• Russian anti-war partisan group RDPS is targeting fuel trains bound for the front lines, burning signalling cabinets in order to force them to change route or stop altogether. A military fuel train was forced all the way to Smolensk, where it found yet another surprise sabotage waiting for it.

Legal context

• Russia/Laws

• Bsodislav, Two questions for everyone complaining BWAAA WHY DON’T RUSSIANS PROTEST: 1. Have you ever been beaten by riot police? 2. Have you asked your governments why they ignored human rights violations, political assassinations and election fraud in Russia for decades selling riot gear?

• Under new law, Russian troops face 10 years in jail for surrender, refusal to fight

• In an apparent endorsement of vigilante violence, a Russian court has given a lenient sentence to a man who stabbed two other men nine times for criticising the war in Ukraine, on the grounds that the victims had “discredited the Russian army in front of witnesses”.

More

• I joined Twitter specifically to fight Vatniks. Why? Because I’m half Russian and am horrified, embarrassed and ashamed of my heritage. It’s my only way to say “I’m Sorry” to the people of Ukraine.

• Half-Ukrainian Half-Orc American

• Russian student detained for 10 days for naming his Wi-Fi network "Glory to Ukraine"

• Meanwhile, in that bastion of free speech and Christian conservative values Russia, this 16 year old girl, Lyubov Lizunova, was just sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for painting 'death to the regime' on a garage door. Her boyfriend was given 6 years at hard labor for being there when she did it and making antiwar posts on social media.

See also

• OVD-Info

• Russian invasion of Ukraine/Belarusians against the war

• Russian invasion of Ukraine/Ukrainian voices

• Agency Denial

• Nidheg/Russian invasion of Ukraine, Reasons