Russia’s war on Ukraine: European reaction

Despite the fact that, the Russian army has been carrying out massacres killing hundreds of civilians for many days in the most important Ukraine cities, a large number of Russians and even soldiers don’t support this war. During a press conference, captured Russian soldiers stated that they were not aware of what was going on. In addition, they repeatedly asked to be forgiven for their actions, for the misfortune that they brought them. The captured Russians admitted that they had been ordered by their commanders and by Putin himself to bomb civilian targets, residential buildings, peaceful people in order to conquer the targeted cities more quickly. In their statements they added that, after their imprisonment, the Ukrainians treated them well, they gave them food and the opportunity to call their relatives, who believed they were already dead. In fact, they are not allowed to use cell phones, to prevent them from searching for information on the conflict. The majority of people in Russia get their news from state television, which depicts their country not as the aggressor in Ukraine but as a victim of the west.Russian popular consensus for the Ukraine invasion is not spread and there are thousands of anti-war protesters. The consequence is that thereare thousands of people arrested during the many demonstrations that have taken place, since the beginning of the invasion, both in Russia and in other countries. Even though they knew the consequences would be severe, they took to the streets to demonstrate and protested to make their opinion known and make their voices heard loudly. The repression took place immediately, without any regard to sex or age: in fact, even some children were arrested for some hours with their mothers, just for having held posters in favor of peace. A similar fate, if not worse, has also befallen activists, old and young people. Also a journalist, Maria Ovsyannikova flashed an anti-war poster during the live news on a Sunday evening. She burst into view, holding up a hand written poster saying “No war” in English and Russian too.Ovsynnikova had also released a pre-recorded video in which she had expressed her shame at working for the system and spreading “Kremlin propaganda”; she was also sorry for having been silent in 2014 when this started.