When President Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine, many anti-war Russians, such as 31-year-old designer Kai Katunina, who lives in Berlin, joined the protests around the world.
During one of the demonstrations, Katunina raised a banner that read “No to war”, and many protesters believed that she was Ukrainian, but few noticed from her name that she was Russian, according to a report by the newspaper.The Guardian“.
“A lot of people think we are Ukrainians because the two peoples look alike, but it was important for me to know about ourselves that we are Russians and that we are also against the war,” she says.
Katunina said that it was clearly impossible to go to the protests with the country’s traditional white, blue and red flag, “unfortunately, the entire Russian tricolor was taken over by state and army propaganda,” adding, “Therefore, we needed a flag that had nothing to do with violence and war.” “.
Kattonina and her friends came up with a solution, which is to put the color white in place of the red.
Kattonina, however, wasn’t the only one with the idea, as she was soon seen in other protests around the world, “It was exhilarating to see that at the same time, other Russians opposed to the war were raising the same flag.”
The horizontally colored white, blue, and white flag was originally used in Veliky Novgorod, one of the oldest cities in Russia, known as the cradle of national democracy, where its citizens were co-rulers as early as the 12th century.
The new flag has since been embraced, on social media, as well as by Russian anti-war protesters in the streets.
Russian poets, artists, and musicians, as well as Russia’s main opposition movement, led by proponent of the imprisoned dissident in Russia, Alexei Navalny, also supported the use of science.
The Forum for Free Russia in Vilnius, a leading opposition group outside the country, described the new flag as a symbol of “peace and freedom”.
The forum stated that the new symbol frees the Russians from their relations with the regime, “by raising the flag we say to the Kremlin: No to war, no dictatorship, and no censorship.”
Kattunina said they, too, were inspired by the events in Belarus, where thousands of protesters used a white, red and white striped flag during rallies after the country’s disputed elections.
And this flag became a nuisance to the regime of Alexander Lukashenko, so that people who wear socks in its colors are subject to prosecution.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the new Russian flag has also infuriated the Kremlin, and officials last week suggested banning it as an “extremist” symbol.
Putin and the state media have sought to unleash their pro-war symbols. The letter z went from being a military sign, to a major sign of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.