Moscow.
Day after day flowers are laid in Moscow for the victims of Dnipro. The place becomes a memorial. Now the police are taking a stand.
It’s a silent protest. commemoration of the dead from Dnipro. Totally apolitical, and that’s why it’s so political. People lay down flowers and cuddly toys in silence. Children were also among the victims, and they too are to be commemorated at a memorial in the center of Moscow, in a small park near the Kiev train station.
You just feel Grief, they say. No one wants to comment on the pros and cons of the war, which in Russia still has to be called a “special operation”. At least 45 people were killed and around 80 injured in the attack on Dnipro, the major city in central Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk region. According to Ukrainian sources, 20 residents are still missing. The shelling was part of the fiercest wave of Russian attacks on Ukraine since the beginning of the year.
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Russia was responsible for that deadly rocket hit in Dnipro denied and blamed on Kyiv. “Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense forces shot down a Russian missile aimed at a power infrastructure object,” Russia’s UN representative Vasily Nebensia told a UN Security Council session in New York. The Ukrainians’ anti-aircraft defenses were located in a residential area, which violates international norms. That’s why the rocket fell on a residential building, according to Nebensja.
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Kyiv denies this account. According to Ukrainian information, the missile was a Ch-22 cruise missile, which is primarily used as an anti-ship missile. The extremely high flight speed makes it virtually impossible for anti-aircraft guns to shoot it down. However, the rocket is not considered to be particularly accurate. Ukraine’s anti-aircraft defense has already denied being able to intercept such a missile.
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The people who am Moscow monument Laying flowers, the dispute over responsibility for the destruction of the apartment building in Dnipro does not matter. Both young and old came. Public anti-war actions have become very rare in Russia due to massive repression.
Immediately after the invasion of Ukraine began, there were demonstrations in many Russian cities. The civil rights organization OVD-Info speaks of more than 21,000 arrests and at least 370 charges in criminal proceedings for anti-war statements and speeches, more than 200,000 Internet addresses have been blocked. But for months there have been hardly any major protests against the invasion of the neighboring country, which President Vladimir Putin ordered almost eleven months ago. The people who commemorate the victims of Dnipro in the middle of Moscow are all the more courageous.
Power struggle between the police and the mourners
The monument at which they lay their flowers is dedicated to the Ukrainian poet Lessja Ukrajinka. It is carefully maintained by the Moscow City Administration. Even after the start of the “special operation”. Lesya Ukrayinka was born Larissa Petrivna Kosach in 1871. She was a fighter, a feminist. In her poems she plays longing for freedom a major role. “I hope against hope!” is the name of her most famous work. It is no coincidence that the unknown initiators of the protest chose this monument.
At the very beginning, the mourners also put up a black and white photo of the destroyed house. But the Moscow city cleaning department quickly cleared that up. Since then, there has been a small power struggle between the authorities and the mourners: the flowers and pictures are repeatedly removed, but day after day, night after night, people come and bring new ones.
A patrol car is parked in front of the monument, two police officers are monitoring what is happening, sometimes taking personal details of the mourners who bring flowers. The civil rights organization OVD-Info reports that there have also been arrests. One of those arrested, who was held at the police station all night, was charged with “petty hooliganism”.
Flowers, cuddly toys, photos and candles also appear in other cities
Not only in Moscow, but also in other Russian cities, bouquets of flowers and cuddly toys appeared in memory of the victims of Dnipro. In Krasnodar, people brought flowers, photos, candles and children’s toys to the monument to Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. This is reported by the online medium “Meduza”. In Saint Petersburg, residents laid out the word “Dnieper” with candles. And in Yekaterinburg, too, people commemorated the dead of Dnipro.
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Your example shows: there are still Moral Courage in Russia. Despite all the repression, despite the imprisonment or expulsion of many opposition figures abroad. Shows that the people of Russia are not a belligerent mass on the one hand and a majority complicit in silence on the other.
The commemoration at the Moscow monument, the silent protest instead of demonstrations and anti-war slogans, apparently unsettles the authorities. “Meduza” tells the story of a participant who took photos at the monument. A police officer approached him and said: “I know you have the right to take photos, I don’t understand myself why you can’t, but the authorities said they can’t, so delete that.” Photo.”
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