Russians Continue Protests vs Invasion Of Ukraine

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine, Anastasia has started her day by composing an anti-war message and posting it on the wall at the entrance of her apartment block in the industrial city of Perm in the Ural Mountains.

Photo Insert: Sergei Besov, a Moscow-based printer and artist, also felt he couldn’t stay silent. Even before the invasion, the 45-year-old was making posters reflecting on the political scene and plastering them around the capital.

“Do not believe the propaganda you see on the TV, read independent media!” reads one. “Violence and death have been constantly with us for three months now — take care of yourselves” reads another, the Associated Press (AP) reported.

The 31-year-old teacher, who asked to be identified only by her first name because she fears for her security, said she wanted “a safe and simple method of getting a message across. I couldn’t do something huge and public,” she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

“I want to get people to think. And I think we should influence whatever space, in whatever way we can.”

Sergei Besov, a Moscow-based printer and artist, also felt he couldn’t stay silent. Even before the invasion, the 45-year-old was making posters reflecting on the political scene and plastering them around the capital.

When Russians voted two years ago on constitutional amendments allowing Putin to seek two more terms after 2024, Besov used his old printing press with hefty wooden Cyrillic type and vintage red ink to print posters that said simply: “Against.”

During the 2020 unrest in Belarus over a disputed presidential election and the ensuing crackdown on the protesters, he made posters saying “Freedom” in Belarusian.

After the invasion of Ukraine, his project, Partisan Press, started making posters saying “No to war” – the main anti-war slogan. Video of the poster being printed became popular on Instagram, and demand for copies was so great that they were given away for free.

Sasha Skochilenko, a 31-year-old artist and musician in St. Petersburg, failed to stay under the radar and is facing severe consequences for what she thought was a relatively safe way to spread the word about the horrors of war: She was detained for replacing five price tags in a supermarket with tiny ones containing anti-war slogans.

“The Russian army bombed an arts school in Mariupol. Some 400 people were hiding in it from the shelling,” one read.

“Russian conscripts are being sent to Ukraine. Lives of our children are the price of this war,” said another one. Skochilenko was really affected by the war, said her partner, Sophia Subbotina.

“She had friends in Kyiv who were sheltering in the subway and calling her, talking about the horror that was going on there,” Subbotina told AP. Skochilenko is facing up to 10 years in prison on charges of spreading false information about the Russian army.

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