“In contemporary Russia, under these conditions, it is a battle — a silent battle,” said Tatyana Krupina, a 28-year-old chemist who went with a small group of friends to lay flowers last week.
“在当前的俄罗斯，在现在的情况下，这是一场战争，一场无声的战争”
坦卡拉，一个28岁的化学家说道。
她和一小群朋友上个礼拜来献过花。
This is what passes for protest in Russia in January 2023, 11 months after the invasion. Russians have also begun laying flowers in other cities, spurred by social media.
在俄国发动侵略战争11个月后，俄国人也开始在其它城市献花。而社交媒体，就是背后的推手。
The flower tussle is one of the first public protests taking place on a large scale since the days after President Vladimir Putin’s announcement in September that hundreds of thousands of men would be called up to fight.
这是自从普京在去年九月，声称数十万年轻男人要被征召入伍后，爆发的俄罗斯的第一场大规模群众抗议运动。
Russia has imposed harsh penalties for criticizing the war, or even calling it one, so for many Russians, laying flowers seems like a rare opportunity to show dissent without being arrested.
俄罗斯对批评战争的人惩罚严厉，所以，献花是表示抗议的一种安全方式。
For anti-government Russians remaining in Russia, the flowers remind them that they are not alone in their opposition to the war, even as the propaganda becomes increasingly vitriolic and the letters Z and V, which have become pro-war symbols, are etched on public buildings.
And for Russians who fled because of persecution, potential conscription or a refusal to pay taxes that will fuel the war machine, the flower memorial is a sign that there are still people left in the country who are brave enough to protest.
“This is not only a way to show people in Ukraine that there are people in Russia who do not condone what is happening; it shows people that they are not alone,” said Alexander Plyushchev, a popular Russian journalist with a significant following on YouTube.
But even laying flowers has potential consequences. At least seven people have been detained, according to a New York Times journalist who witnessed the episodes over the past week. Four were detained after placing flowers at the site.
The police have tried to prevent people from photographing the memorial, and have told others to delete the images from their phones. But people keep arriving, looking for an opening when many are not gathered around the monument so that it does not seem like an illegal public gathering — and quietly placing their flowers.
“My endurance is finished; I want to show my opinion,” a lawyer named Ekaterina Varenik said Saturday afternoon after placing flowers on the statue. She was referring to not being able to express her opinion publicly.
Varenik, 26, said she last protested when opposition politician Alexei Navalny was arrested two years ago. She stayed home when thousands protested the war mobilization. But, she said of the crackdown, “Every day it gets worse and worse, and stricter and stricter.”
For more than half an hour, Varenik stood in front of the statue with a homemade poster that read, “Ukraine: not our enemies, but our brothers.”
半个小时的时间里面，瓦尼卡在雕像前拿着自制的标语：“乌克兰，不是我们的敌人，是我们的弟兄。”
She was detained by the police shortly afterward, and could face up to 15 days in prison.
她很快被赶来的警察逮捕，面临最高15天的牢狱之灾。
For many, standing in front of the statue is intensely emotional.
对许多人来说，只是站在这个雕像前，就已经心如刀绞。
“How can this be happening?” sobbed a pensioner named Rita who declined to provide her surname out of fear of retribution, and gave her age only as over 50. “People are dying: children, the elderly,” she said. “It is just awful. Maybe this will be a reminder to people that we are living in a terrifying world.”
Some prominent Russians have minimized the protests.
有些俄罗斯名人就对这次抗议很蔑视。
“Bringing flowers to a monument does not require courage, or even money,” Dmitry L. Bykov, a poet and writer who is critical of the government and lives in exile, said Wednesday during a discussion streamed on YouTube.
“拿鲜花到纪念碑不需要勇气，甚至不需要花钱。”诗人和作家，反政府流亡人士拜克夫周六在油管上说，
“This is aesthetically beautiful, but completely pointless,” said Bykov, who Bellingcat’s investigative journalists concluded was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 2019 with a nerve agent similar to the one used on Navalny. He said, “There is only one positive effect: Maybe someone will find out who Lesya Ukrainka is — a great poet — and read her work.”
The statue has been the site of altercations with pro-war nationalists, who have denounced the mourners and accused them in reports to the authorities of discrediting the Russian military, which is now a crime in Russia.
The Kremlin’s crackdown on political opposition and protests accelerated after the invasion of Ukraine. About 20,000 protesters have been detained since the war began, according to OVD Info, a human rights watchdog. Many lost their jobs after protesting, signing petitions or writing social media posts critical of the war.
Ilya Yashin, a municipal councilor in Moscow, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for speaking about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. A 19-year-old university student from the city of Arkhangelsk is facing up to 10 years in jail for social media posts criticizing the war.
In that context, defying the police to lay flowers may require a degree of bravery, but it also takes a mental toll that has become harder to bear as the war grinds on.
“I know that at any minute the police can come to my house and arrest me,” said Maksim Shatalov, 36, a former flight attendant who said he had been fired from his job because of his anti-war position.
Shatalov became friends with a tight-knit circle of activists after being thrown into an avtozak, or police van, after a protest in April. During the summer and fall, they protested against the mobilization, painted anti-war messages around in the city in chalk and laid flowers at other memorials.
Shatalov and his friend Anna Saifytdinova, 34, brought flowers together to the statue one recent evening. She had four white roses — Russians give an even number of flowers as a tribute to the dead.
Because one of their friends, a minor, had been detained after placing a picture of the devastated Dnipro building at the base of the statue, Saifytdinova waited until there were no people around so they could not be accused of staging an unsanctioned protest.
“I already spent eight days in jail for protesting mobilization,” she said. “If I am detained again, I face criminal charges.”
That could mean a sentence of up to 10 years.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” she said. “You never know when something bad could happen, or when it won’t happen. Some people have been detained for holding a blank piece of paper in public.”
Shatalov said he was planning to leave Russia soon because he feared arrest.
“I believe that I would do more good in another country than by staying here without a job and without a livelihood,” he said. “What will I accomplish when I sit in a prison camp: Will I be beaten up constantly or kept in a cage all the time like Navalny? Or someone from the private military company Wagner will come to try to recruit me to fight in Ukraine with threats that if I don’t sign up? They’ll just drive me to the point where I kill myself.”
Still, some who risk arrest insist on showing their resistance.
“Moscow is a huge city, and everyone is quiet,” said Varenik, the lawyer, before she was detained for her anti-war poster. “I want to show the world that we should not be quiet. We allow all of this with our silence.”
“This is not only a way to show people in Ukraine that there are people in Russia who do not condone what is happening; it shows people that they are not alone,” said Alexander Plyushchev, a popular Russian journalist with a significant following on YouTube.
But even laying flowers has potential consequences. At least seven people have been detained, according to a New York Times journalist who witnessed the episodes over the past week. Four were detained after placing flowers at the site.
The police have tried to prevent people from photographing the memorial, and have told others to delete the images from their phones. But people keep arriving, looking for an opening when many are not gathered around the monument so that it does not seem like an illegal public gathering — and quietly placing their flowers.
“My endurance is finished; I want to show my opinion,” a lawyer named Ekaterina Varenik said Saturday afternoon after placing flowers on the statue. She was referring to not being able to express her opinion publicly.
Varenik, 26, said she last protested when opposition politician Alexei Navalny was arrested two years ago. She stayed home when thousands protested the war mobilization. But, she said of the crackdown, “Every day it gets worse and worse, and stricter and stricter.”
For more than half an hour, Varenik stood in front of the statue with a homemade poster that read, “Ukraine: not our enemies, but our brothers.”
She was detained by the police shortly afterward, and could face up to 15 days in prison.
For many, standing in front of the statue is intensely emotional.
“How can this be happening?” sobbed a pensioner named Rita who declined to provide her surname out of fear of retribution, and gave her age only as over 50. “People are dying: children, the elderly,” she said. “It is just awful. Maybe this will be a reminder to people that we are living in a terrifying world.”
Some prominent Russians have minimized the protests.
“Bringing flowers to a monument does not require courage, or even money,” Dmitry L. Bykov, a poet and writer who is critical of the government and lives in exile, said Wednesday during a discussion streamed on YouTube.
“This is aesthetically beautiful, but completely pointless,” said Bykov, who Bellingcat’s investigative journalists concluded was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 2019 with a nerve agent similar to the one used on Navalny. He said, “There is only one positive effect: Maybe someone will find out who Lesya Ukrainka is — a great poet — and read her work.”
The statue has been the site of altercations with pro-war nationalists, who have denounced the mourners and accused them in reports to the authorities of discrediting the Russian military, which is now a crime in Russia.
The Kremlin’s crackdown on political opposition and protests accelerated after the invasion of Ukraine. About 20,000 protesters have been detained since the war began, according to OVD Info, a human rights watchdog. Many lost their jobs after protesting, signing petitions or writing social media posts critical of the war.
Ilya Yashin, a municipal councilor in Moscow, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for speaking about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. A 19-year-old university student from the city of Arkhangelsk is facing up to 10 years in jail for social media posts criticizing the war.
In that context, defying the police to lay flowers may require a degree of bravery, but it also takes a mental toll that has become harder to bear as the war grinds on.
“I know that at any minute the police can come to my house and arrest me,” said Maksim Shatalov, 36, a former flight attendant who said he had been fired from his job because of his anti-war position.
Shatalov became friends with a tight-knit circle of activists after being thrown into an avtozak, or police van, after a protest in April. During the summer and fall, they protested against the mobilization, painted anti-war messages around in the city in chalk and laid flowers at other memorials.
Shatalov and his friend Anna Saifytdinova, 34, brought flowers together to the statue one recent evening. She had four white roses — Russians give an even number of flowers as a tribute to the dead.
Because one of their friends, a minor, had been detained after placing a picture of the devastated Dnipro building at the base of the statue, Saifytdinova waited until there were no people around so they could not be accused of staging an unsanctioned protest.
“I already spent eight days in jail for protesting mobilization,” she said. “If I am detained again, I face criminal charges.”
That could mean a sentence of up to 10 years.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” she said. “You never know when something bad could happen, or when it won’t happen. Some people have been detained for holding a blank piece of paper in public.”
Shatalov said he was planning to leave Russia soon because he feared arrest.
“I believe that I would do more good in another country than by staying here without a job and without a livelihood,” he said. “What will I accomplish when I sit in a prison camp: Will I be beaten up constantly or kept in a cage all the time like Navalny? Or someone from the private military company Wagner will come to try to recruit me to fight in Ukraine with threats that if I don’t sign up? They’ll just drive me to the point where I kill myself.”
Still, some who risk arrest insist on showing their resistance.
“Moscow is a huge city, and everyone is quiet,” said Varenik, the lawyer, before she was detained for her anti-war poster. “I want to show the world that we should not be quiet. We allow all of this with our silence.”
“In contemporary Russia, under these conditions, it is a battle — a silent battle,” said Tatyana Krupina, a 28-year-old chemist who went with a small group of friends to lay flowers last week.
“在当前的俄罗斯，在现在的情况下，这是一场战争，一场无声的战争”
坦卡拉，一个28岁的化学家说道。
她和一小群朋友上个礼拜来献过花。
This is what passes for protest in Russia in January 2023, 11 months after the invasion. Russians have also begun laying flowers in other cities, spurred by social media.
在俄国发动侵略战争11个月后，俄国人也开始在其它城市献花。而社交媒体，就是背后的推手。
The flower tussle is one of the first public protests taking place on a large scale since the days after President Vladimir Putin’s announcement in September that hundreds of thousands of men would be called up to fight.
这是自从普京在去年九月，声称数十万年轻男人要被征召入伍后，爆发的俄罗斯的第一场大规模群众抗议运动。
Russia has imposed harsh penalties for criticizing the war, or even calling it one, so for many Russians, laying flowers seems like a rare opportunity to show dissent without being arrested.
俄罗斯对批评战争的人惩罚严厉，所以，献花是表示抗议的一种安全方式。
For anti-government Russians remaining in Russia, the flowers remind them that they are not alone in their opposition to the war, even as the propaganda becomes increasingly vitriolic and the letters Z and V, which have become pro-war symbols, are etched on public buildings.
对于在俄国国内的反战异议人士，鲜花让他们感到不再孤单，特别是官方大力宣传战争，把象征支持战争的Z和V，刻在大楼的墙上的时候。那些鲜花温暖人心。
And for Russians who fled because of persecution, potential conscription or a refusal to pay taxes that will fuel the war machine, the flower memorial is a sign that there are still people left in the country who are brave enough to protest.
当俄罗斯人逃离迫害，征兵，或者用逃跑的方式拒绝交税，免得为战争送子弹的时候，鲜花是一种象征，在这个国家，还有勇敢的人，用这种方式，站起来抗议。
“This is not only a way to show people in Ukraine that there are people in Russia who do not condone what is happening; it shows people that they are not alone,” said Alexander Plyushchev, a popular Russian journalist with a significant following on YouTube.
油管网红记者压力山大说：“这不只是让乌克兰人明白，俄罗斯人同样感同身受，还告诉他们，我们和他们站在一起。”
But even laying flowers has potential consequences. At least seven people have been detained, according to a New York Times journalist who witnessed the episodes over the past week. Four were detained after placing flowers at the site.
但即使是献花也不安全，据纽约时报跟踪报道这个事情的记者所知，最近一个礼拜，已经有七人因为这个被捕，其中四人更是刚放下花就被逮捕。
The police have tried to prevent people from photographing the memorial, and have told others to delete the images from their phones. But people keep arriving, looking for an opening when many are not gathered around the monument so that it does not seem like an illegal public gathering — and quietly placing their flowers.
警察还不许人民照相记录这一事件，抓到就让他们删除相片。但是人们继续涌来，在纪念碑周围见缝插针，在看起来不像非法集会的时候，静静的在纪念碑前放下鲜花。
“My endurance is finished; I want to show my opinion,” a lawyer named Ekaterina Varenik said Saturday afternoon after placing flowers on the statue. She was referring to not being able to express her opinion publicly.
“我的使命达成，我想表达我的想法。”一个叫尔喀特尼娜的律师，在周六下午放下鲜花，她说她没法公开表达自己的想法，只能这么偷偷的干。
Varenik, 26, said she last protested when opposition politician Alexei Navalny was arrested two years ago. She stayed home when thousands protested the war mobilization. But, she said of the crackdown, “Every day it gets worse and worse, and stricter and stricter.”
26岁的瓦尼卡说起她因为示威在两年前被捕的事情，她这次在几千人反战抗议的时候，躲在家里面疗伤。她说“管控越来越严，情况越来越糟糕。”
For more than half an hour, Varenik stood in front of the statue with a homemade poster that read, “Ukraine: not our enemies, but our brothers.”
半个小时的时间里面，瓦尼卡在雕像前拿着自制的标语：“乌克兰，不是我们的敌人，是我们的弟兄。”
She was detained by the police shortly afterward, and could face up to 15 days in prison.
她很快被赶来的警察逮捕，面临最高15天的牢狱之灾。
For many, standing in front of the statue is intensely emotional.
对许多人来说，只是站在这个雕像前，就已经心如刀绞。
“How can this be happening?” sobbed a pensioner named Rita who declined to provide her surname out of fear of retribution, and gave her age only as over 50. “People are dying: children, the elderly,” she said. “It is just awful. Maybe this will be a reminder to people that we are living in a terrifying world.”
“这到底是怎么一回事”芮塔哭着说，她因为恐惧受迫害，不敢告诉记者自己的姓氏，只说她五十几岁。“老人和小孩在死去。”她说，“太可怕了，这是一个可怕的世界。”
Some prominent Russians have minimized the protests.
有些俄罗斯名人就对这次抗议很蔑视。
“Bringing flowers to a monument does not require courage, or even money,” Dmitry L. Bykov, a poet and writer who is critical of the government and lives in exile, said Wednesday during a discussion streamed on YouTube.
“拿鲜花到纪念碑不需要勇气，甚至不需要花钱。”诗人和作家，反政府流亡人士拜克夫周六在油管上说，
“This is aesthetically beautiful, but completely pointless,” said Bykov, who Bellingcat’s investigative journalists concluded was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 2019 with a nerve agent similar to the one used on Navalny. He said, “There is only one positive effect: Maybe someone will find out who Lesya Ukrainka is — a great poet — and read her work.”
The statue has been the site of altercations with pro-war nationalists, who have denounced the mourners and accused them in reports to the authorities of discrediting the Russian military, which is now a crime in Russia.
The Kremlin’s crackdown on political opposition and protests accelerated after the invasion of Ukraine. About 20,000 protesters have been detained since the war began, according to OVD Info, a human rights watchdog. Many lost their jobs after protesting, signing petitions or writing social media posts critical of the war.
Ilya Yashin, a municipal councilor in Moscow, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for speaking about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. A 19-year-old university student from the city of Arkhangelsk is facing up to 10 years in jail for social media posts criticizing the war.
In that context, defying the police to lay flowers may require a degree of bravery, but it also takes a mental toll that has become harder to bear as the war grinds on.
“I know that at any minute the police can come to my house and arrest me,” said Maksim Shatalov, 36, a former flight attendant who said he had been fired from his job because of his anti-war position.
Shatalov became friends with a tight-knit circle of activists after being thrown into an avtozak, or police van, after a protest in April. During the summer and fall, they protested against the mobilization, painted anti-war messages around in the city in chalk and laid flowers at other memorials.
Shatalov and his friend Anna Saifytdinova, 34, brought flowers together to the statue one recent evening. She had four white roses — Russians give an even number of flowers as a tribute to the dead.
Because one of their friends, a minor, had been detained after placing a picture of the devastated Dnipro building at the base of the statue, Saifytdinova waited until there were no people around so they could not be accused of staging an unsanctioned protest.
“I already spent eight days in jail for protesting mobilization,” she said. “If I am detained again, I face criminal charges.”
That could mean a sentence of up to 10 years.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” she said. “You never know when something bad could happen, or when it won’t happen. Some people have been detained for holding a blank piece of paper in public.”
Shatalov said he was planning to leave Russia soon because he feared arrest.
“I believe that I would do more good in another country than by staying here without a job and without a livelihood,” he said. “What will I accomplish when I sit in a prison camp: Will I be beaten up constantly or kept in a cage all the time like Navalny? Or someone from the private military company Wagner will come to try to recruit me to fight in Ukraine with threats that if I don’t sign up? They’ll just drive me to the point where I kill myself.”
Still, some who risk arrest insist on showing their resistance.
“Moscow is a huge city, and everyone is quiet,” said Varenik, the lawyer, before she was detained for her anti-war poster. “I want to show the world that we should not be quiet. We allow all of this with our silence.”
“在当代俄罗斯，在这种情况下，这是一场战斗——一场无声的战斗，”28 岁的化学家塔蒂亚娜克鲁皮娜 (Tatyana Krupina) 说，她上周和一小群朋友一起去献花。
这就是入侵 11 个月后的 2023 年 1 月俄罗斯的抗议活动。 在社交媒体的推动下，俄罗斯人也开始在其他城市献花。
自总统弗拉基米尔·普京 (Vladimir Putin) 于 9 月宣布将召集数十万人参加战斗以来，这场争花运动是首次大规模公开抗议活动之一。
俄罗斯对批评这场战争甚至称其为一场战争的行为处以严厉的惩罚，因此对于许多俄罗斯人来说，献花似乎是一个难得的表达异议而不被逮捕的机会。
对于留在俄罗斯的反政府俄罗斯人来说，鲜花提醒他们，他们并不是唯一反对战争的人，即使宣传变得越来越刻薄，字母 Z 和 V 已经成为亲战的象征，被刻在上面 公共建筑。
对于因迫害、可能征兵或拒绝缴纳将为战争机器加油的税款而逃离的俄罗斯人来说，鲜花纪念馆是一个标志，表明该国仍有人勇敢地进行抗议。
“这不仅是向乌克兰人民表明俄罗斯人不容忍正在发生的事情的一种方式； 它向人们表明他们并不孤单。
但即使是鲜花也有潜在的后果。 据一名目击过去一周事件的《纽约时报》记者称，至少有 7 人被拘留。 四人在现场放花后被拘留。
警方试图阻止人们拍摄纪念馆，并要求其他人删除手机中的照片。 但人们不断涌入，在纪念碑周围没有很多人聚集的时候寻找空位，这样就不会让人觉得这是非法的公众集会——然后悄悄地放上鲜花。
“我的忍耐结束了； 我想表达我的意见，”一位名叫叶卡捷琳娜·瓦列尼克 (Ekaterina Varenik) 的律师周六下午在为雕像献花后说道。 她指的是无法公开表达自己的意见。
26 岁的瓦列尼克说，她最后一次抗议是在两年前反对派政治家阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼 (Alexei Navalny) 被捕时。 当数千人抗议战争动员时，她呆在家里。 但是，她谈到镇压时说，“每天都变得越来越糟，越来越严格。”
在半个多小时的时间里，瓦列尼克拿着一张自制的海报站在雕像前，海报上写着：“乌克兰：不是我们的敌人，而是我们的兄弟。”
不久之后，她被警方拘留，并可能面临最高 15 天的监禁。
对很多人来说，站在雕像前都会激动不已。
“怎么会这样？” 一位名叫丽塔的养老金领取者抽泣着说道，她出于害怕遭到报复而拒绝透露自己的姓氏，并只透露了自己的年龄超过 50 岁。“人们正在死去：孩子，老人，”她说。 “这太可怕了。 也许这会提醒人们我们生活在一个可怕的世界里。”
一些著名的俄罗斯人已将抗议活动降至最低。
“为纪念碑献花不需要勇气，甚至不需要金钱，”流亡海外的诗人兼作家德米特里·L·贝科夫周三在 YouTube 上的一场讨论中说。
“这在美学上很美，但完全没有意义，”Bellingcat 的调查记者得出的结论是 Bykov 是 2019 年一次未遂中毒的受害者，使用的神经毒剂类似于对 Navalny 使用的神经毒剂。 他说，“只有一个积极的影响：也许有人会发现 Lesya Ukrainka 是谁——一位伟大的诗人——并阅读她的作品。”
这座雕像一直是与支持战争的民族主义者发生争执的地方，他们谴责哀悼者并在向当局提交的报告中指责他们诋毁俄罗斯军队，这在俄罗斯现在是一种犯罪行为。
克里姆林宫在入侵乌克兰后加速了对政治反对派和抗议活动的镇压。 据人权监督机构 OVD Info 称，自战争开始以来，约有 20,000 名抗议者被拘留。 许多人在抗议、签署请愿书或在社交媒体上发表批评战争的帖子后失去了工作。
莫斯科市议员伊利亚·亚辛 (Ilya Yashin) 因谈论俄罗斯在乌克兰布查 (Bucha) 的暴行而被判处 8.5 年监禁。 来自阿尔汉格尔斯克市的一名 19 岁大学生因批评战争的社交媒体帖子而面临最高 10 年的监禁。
在这种情况下，反抗警察献花可能需要一定程度的勇气，但也需要付出精神上的代价，这种代价已变得越来越难以控制
翻译：
"这不仅是向乌克兰人民展示俄罗斯有人不赞成正在发生的事情的方式；它向人们展示他们并不孤单，"俄罗斯著名记者亚历山大·普吕舍夫说，他在YouTube上有很大的粉丝基础。
但是，即使是献花也有可能产生后果。根据纽约时报的一名记者的证词，至少有七人被拘留。其中四人是在纪念碑旁献花被拘留的。
警察试图阻止人们拍摄纪念碑，并告诉其他人删除手机上的照片。但人们继续来到，寻找机会，当许多人没有聚集在纪念碑周围时，这样看起来不像是非法公开聚会-悄悄地献花。
"我的耐力已经用完了，我想表达我的意见，"律师名叫Ekaterina Varenik的人周六下午在雕像前献花时说。她指的是无法公开表达她的意见。
26岁的Varenik说，她最后一次抗议是在反对派政治家阿列克谢·纳瓦尔尼(Alexei Navalny)被捕两年前。当成千上万人抗议战争动员时，她呆在家里。但她说，"每天都变得越来越糟，越来越严格。"
超过半个小时，Varenik站在雕
好慢，还没有翻译完就不玩了。
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“This is not only a way to show people in Ukraine that there are people in Russia who do not condone what is happening; it shows people that they are not alone,” said Alexander Plyushchev, a popular Russian journalist with a significant following on YouTube.
But even laying flowers has potential consequences. At least seven people have been detained, according to a New York Times journalist who witnessed the episodes over the past week. Four were detained after placing flowers at the site.
The police have tried to prevent people from photographing the memorial, and have told others to delete the images from their phones. But people keep arriving, looking for an opening when many are not gathered around the monument so that it does not seem like an illegal public gathering — and quietly placing their flowers.
“My endurance is finished; I want to show my opinion,” a lawyer named Ekaterina Varenik said Saturday afternoon after placing flowers on the statue. She was referring to not being able to express her opinion publicly.
Varenik, 26, said she last protested when opposition politician Alexei Navalny was arrested two years ago. She stayed home when thousands protested the war mobilization. But, she said of the crackdown, “Every day it gets worse and worse, and stricter and stricter.”
For more than half an hour, Varenik stood in front of the statue with a homemade poster that read, “Ukraine: not our enemies, but our brothers.”
She was detained by the police shortly afterward, and could face up to 15 days in prison.
For many, standing in front of the statue is intensely emotional.
“How can this be happening?” sobbed a pensioner named Rita who declined to provide her surname out of fear of retribution, and gave her age only as over 50. “People are dying: children, the elderly,” she said. “It is just awful. Maybe this will be a reminder to people that we are living in a terrifying world.”
Some prominent Russians have minimized the protests.
“Bringing flowers to a monument does not require courage, or even money,” Dmitry L. Bykov, a poet and writer who is critical of the government and lives in exile, said Wednesday during a discussion streamed on YouTube.
“This is aesthetically beautiful, but completely pointless,” said Bykov, who Bellingcat’s investigative journalists concluded was the victim of an attempted poisoning in 2019 with a nerve agent similar to the one used on Navalny. He said, “There is only one positive effect: Maybe someone will find out who Lesya Ukrainka is — a great poet — and read her work.”
The statue has been the site of altercations with pro-war nationalists, who have denounced the mourners and accused them in reports to the authorities of discrediting the Russian military, which is now a crime in Russia.
The Kremlin’s crackdown on political opposition and protests accelerated after the invasion of Ukraine. About 20,000 protesters have been detained since the war began, according to OVD Info, a human rights watchdog. Many lost their jobs after protesting, signing petitions or writing social media posts critical of the war.
Ilya Yashin, a municipal councilor in Moscow, was sentenced to 8 1/2 years in prison for speaking about Russian atrocities in Bucha, Ukraine. A 19-year-old university student from the city of Arkhangelsk is facing up to 10 years in jail for social media posts criticizing the war.
In that context, defying the police to lay flowers may require a degree of bravery, but it also takes a mental toll that has become harder to bear as the war grinds on.
“I know that at any minute the police can come to my house and arrest me,” said Maksim Shatalov, 36, a former flight attendant who said he had been fired from his job because of his anti-war position.
Shatalov became friends with a tight-knit circle of activists after being thrown into an avtozak, or police van, after a protest in April. During the summer and fall, they protested against the mobilization, painted anti-war messages around in the city in chalk and laid flowers at other memorials.
Shatalov and his friend Anna Saifytdinova, 34, brought flowers together to the statue one recent evening. She had four white roses — Russians give an even number of flowers as a tribute to the dead.
Because one of their friends, a minor, had been detained after placing a picture of the devastated Dnipro building at the base of the statue, Saifytdinova waited until there were no people around so they could not be accused of staging an unsanctioned protest.
“I already spent eight days in jail for protesting mobilization,” she said. “If I am detained again, I face criminal charges.”
That could mean a sentence of up to 10 years.
“It’s like Russian roulette,” she said. “You never know when something bad could happen, or when it won’t happen. Some people have been detained for holding a blank piece of paper in public.”
Shatalov said he was planning to leave Russia soon because he feared arrest.
“I believe that I would do more good in another country than by staying here without a job and without a livelihood,” he said. “What will I accomplish when I sit in a prison camp: Will I be beaten up constantly or kept in a cage all the time like Navalny? Or someone from the private military company Wagner will come to try to recruit me to fight in Ukraine with threats that if I don’t sign up? They’ll just drive me to the point where I kill myself.”
Still, some who risk arrest insist on showing their resistance.
“Moscow is a huge city, and everyone is quiet,” said Varenik, the lawyer, before she was detained for her anti-war poster. “I want to show the world that we should not be quiet. We allow all of this with our silence.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/23/world/europe/moscow-flowers-protest-ukraine-war-dnipro.html
“志愿军”入朝时看不到头的卡车队，都是崭新的Dodge Powerwagan, 苏联还没来得及用二战就结束了，都给了中国。
那时应该像现在援吴一样，不让饿死，也不让大赢
漂亮国成熟了