2022-04-19 09:51:08
Through 22 years of Putin’s rule, ordinary Russians have been practically the only people who did fight, even as Western governments courted this regime, received resources from it, came to attend the Olympics, world cups and economic summits – after the 2014 events, too. Only now have they woken up; and even then, unlike the exponentially growing sanctions targeted at Russian society, the process of banning oil and gas exports has been arranged step by step and still going on. At least since 2015, European countries, Germany and France in particular, have been selling weapons and protest-breaking techniques to Russia. But now Russians are accused of their own wrongdoing: it is supposedly Russians who woke up only when the West threatened to deprive us of Ikea meatballs.
But all this time Russian men and women have been protesting against every inhuman initiative – from the “gay propaganda law” to the “Dima Iakovlev law” cutting ties with Americans; they have been protesting against Russia’s aggression in Georgia and in the Crimea; they have been taking to the streets to support protests in Belarus and Kazakhstan; they have been holding antifascist protests in memory of assassinated antifascist activists Markelov and Baburova (also Russians, by the way); Russian men and women have been creating various NGOs and support groups, have been disseminating information on HIV, have been monitoring elections and have been informing the public of the offences committed, have been working in the media despite the censorship, murders of journalists and civil rights activists, despite political persecution, despite the information about tortures in prisons and police stations, despite having children and elderly parents to look after.
Right now Alexandra Skochilenko, the artist from Saint-Petersburg, is under arrest for switching the price tags in the food store: she’d put there the cards with the information about the Russian army’s actions in Mariupol. I would state that again – right now she is under a threat of 10 years in prison for this instance of political statement/activism. Moreover, she has bipolar and genetic gluten intolerance, and being under arrest is killing her.
https://www.getrevue.co/profile/belkitz/issues/weekly-newsletter-of-issue-2-1090373
1.1K viewsDee Homak, 06:51
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