Between vituperations against “the West”, nuclear blackmail, victimization and intensification of the Russian war effort, the message sent this Wednesday by Vladimir Putin to Russian television froze the entire world on Wednesday. But clearly, the international community is not the only one in shock. Indeed, the will expressed by the President of the Russian Federation in his speech to sign a “partial mobilization” order, that is to say to summon the country’s 300,000 reservists to send them to the front, triggered a wave of protests among the Russian people. .
From Moscow to Arkkangelsk, Russia on the street
In 38 cities, citizens concerned or furious about the direction of the war and its new turn, gathered to express their opposition to the turn of the screw advocated by Vladimir Putin. Outside of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the nation’s political nerve centers, there have been protest rallies in Yekaterinburg, in the foothills of the Urals, or in Siberia, Tomsk and Novosibirsk.
OVD-Info, an NGO whose work includes monitoring the protests, still saw processions in Perm, Chelyabinsk, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, Tver, Krasnodar, Saratov, Kaliningrad, Irkutsk, Petrozavodsk, Ryazan, Arkhangelsk, Tula, Yakutsk, Korolev, Ulan – Ude, Zheleznogorsk, Izhevsk, Samara, Salavat, Volgograd, Vologda, Tyumen, Kazan, Ivanovo, Syktyvkar, Surgut, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Vyatskiye Polyany, Smolensk, Belgorod.
It is difficult to get an idea of the number of protesters in the very autocratic and opaque Russian Federation. We only know, thanks again to OVD-Info, that police arrested at least 1,386 people on the fringes of these outbursts of anger, according to a tally held as of 7:30 a.m. Thursday. Statistics that show that these are the most significant demonstrations hostile to the war and to the Kremlin’s policy since the ones that had followed the country’s entry into the war against Ukraine. It was in Saint Petersburg and Moscow that the highest number of arrests were recorded on Wednesday with 541 and 509 arrests respectively.
16,500 arrests since February 24
Among the protesters, we also noticed many female protesters. Like these women who agreed to appear in front of the BFMTV cameras in Moscow.
“We should have been afraid before, the worst is over,” laments a first young woman.
Most are less anxious for themselves or their immediate fate, but fear for the life of a husband, brother or son. This is how this second Muscovite questioned: “I will not give you the life of my son. It will be useless but it is my duty to express my opinion: no, to war”.
In all, OVD-Info has recorded 16,500 arrests among war opponents since the February 24 invasion.
a mass exodus
In addition to rallies, there are many ways to reject a possible mobilization. Among them, a process seems more discreet and without a doubt more effective, although also more definitive: fly and leave the country. Airlines have thus noted an imminent saturation of planes leaving Russian runways. The spokesman for the flight comparator Liligo thus underlined to BFMTV.com “an upward trend” during the day on Wednesday.
“Between Tuesday and today, searches for airline tickets from Russia have multiplied by 2.5,” he says.
Several routes quickly fell victim to this success. “Flights from Moscow to the capitals of Georgia, Turkey and Armenia for September 21 were no longer available within minutes of Putin’s announcement,” the report says. Moscow Times after consulting the page aviasales.ru (the largest local travel planning platform) continues: “As of noon Moscow time, direct flights from Moscow to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan had also stopped appearing on the website.” A one way trip in a Moscow-Istanbul this Thursday was also flashed to 1250 euros according to our antenna.
Calling up 300,000 reservists is one thing, but remobilizing people’s minds promises to be another set of sleeves for Russian power.
Source: BFM TV
