The price of our protest.
It may seem to you that Russians protest not that much against the war. Let me explain something.
On February 24, I woke up and found out that my country had attacked Ukraine. I was in shock. I couldn’t believe it. I was furious because an attack on a neighboring state is a disgrace for my country and for me personally. At first, I decided to refrain from participating in an anti-war demonstration, because it is quite obvious that this will not stop Putin, and it will cost me very much. But in the evening after work, I impulsively rushed to the city center for a rally, because the thought of complicity in this crime was unbearable for me. I wanted to take away from Putin the opportunity to say that Russians support this war. I wanted to give the politicians of free democratic states the opportunity to speak on my behalf - on behalf of a Russian woman who opposes Putin’s military aggression and Putin’s regime. I knew how expensive my protest could cost me - for participating in an unauthorized rally, I could be punished with a fine of 20 thousand rubles or arrested for 15 days (In 2019, the median salary in Russia is 34 thousand rubles (29.9 thousand rubles after tax)). But still, I decided it was worth it.
The city center was packed with riot police. Pushkin Square was cordoned off. I heard a policeman passing by saying into his walkie-talkie that the paddy wagons were already packed. Me and several other girls were rudely detained when we were dancing traditional slavic circle dance, chanting “No more war!” The paddy wagon was packed, there were 27 of us, mostly young people about 20 years old. We spent the whole night on the bare floor in the corridor of the police department, we were forced to undergo fingerprinting, like criminals, we were issued fines of 20 thousand rubles. Personally, I was threatened with an article about repeated violation of the rules of mass events, since in January 2021 I was detained with a poster at a rally after Navalny’s arrest, for repeated violation, the punishment is a fine of 150-300 thousand rubles (to pay this fine, I would have to pay my entire salary for several months) or arrest for up to 30 days. I was saved only by the intervention of a lawyer, who was provided to me by the human rights organization “Apology of Protest”.
So please don’t hate Russians. We live in a poor authoritarian state, and we don’t have a lot of means to express our protest. Most of our opposition politicians have been killed, imprisoned or forced to emigrate. Most of the independent media have been destroyed, the rest are state propaganda. Our media laws are monstrous. Our media is forbidden to call the war with Ukraine a war. Any assistance to Ukraine has been declared a treason and will be punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Medvedev announced the possibility of returning the death penalty.
When Putin came to power, I was six years old. Most of those who come out to protest against the war were born already under Putin. We have lived all our lives in an unfree, corrupt country, and now our life has turned into something completely fucked up overnight. We’re just trying to survive somehow.
Я против этой войны. Я люблю свою страну, и мне больно.
