2024-02-24 16:16:09
According to the “Russians against war” initiative, around 250 people demonstrated on Saturday afternoon in the center of Vienna against the war that Russian President Vladimir Putin started against Ukraine exactly two years ago. It was the largest anti-war demonstration by the Russian community in Austria to date. In addition to combative tones in the spirit of the dead opposition leader Alexei Navalny, there was also talk of sadness, with some demonstrators crying.
“We are demonstrating today, as we did two years ago and a year ago, against the Russian government’s decision, expressing our solidarity with all the victims of the war and are here together on this day of mourning,” said one of the organizers of the demonstration at Michaelerplatz in the 1st district of Vienna. She asked not to be named for fear of possible reprisals against relatives in Russia.
The organizers of “Russians against War” had already internally pointed out the risk of prosecution in Russia in connection with anti-war slogans and, among other things, recommended that exposed participants partially cover their faces. After the murder of a Russian defector in Spain, there is also fear among Russians in Austria that something like this could happen again in Vienna, a masked demonstrator assured the APA.
Devastated cities, hundreds of thousands of deaths and torture in Ukraine would not leave people indifferent in Russia either, explained another organizer. “It’s just not possible to speak about it freely in Russia at the moment: anyone who publicly expresses their opinion (against the war, note) is persecuted,” she explained. The demonstrators in Vienna left no doubt about their stance in public: “Stop the Russian aggression”, “Putin to The Hague” and “Putin is a murderer” were chanted. “Russia will be free” was also chanted, a slogan used in particular by Alexei Navalny. The fate of the opposition politician was occasionally discussed on posters: for example, there was talk of Putin handing over his body to Navalny’s mother – which has happened in the meantime.
“These demonstrations, especially when they take place in many cities in Europe, show that these Russians outside of Russia have remained a part of the Russian political landscape,” prominent Russian political scientist Kirill Rogov told APA on the sidelines of the event. He described the rallies as an “important sign for Europe”. Rogow has been working at the Institute for Human Science (IWM) in Vienna since March 2022; in Russia itself he was stigmatized as a “foreign agent” by the Ministry of Justice.
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