Ukrainian war, protests in Russia: over 2,500 arrests

The number of arrests that would have been made today in Russia during the protests against the war in Ukraine continues to increase by the hour. According to the civil rights site Ovd-Info, more than 2,500 people were arrested in various Russian cities. Read also In Moscow, the two leading exponents of Memorial, Oleg Orlov and Svetlana Gannushkina, who turns 80 today, were arrested. Orlov, to whom Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Benedetto Della Vedova, had spoken on the phone on Friday, to express Italy’s solidarity with Memorial after the search of the organization’s offices that lasted hours, is part of Memorial’s Human Rights Council: he was stopped on the Manege Square at two o’clock this afternoon (Moscow time) while he was on a picket line for peace. Orlov, who is 69, had a poster that read: “Peace for Ukraine, freedom for the Russians”. Gannushkina, chairman of the Civic Assistance Committee, an organization that deals with assistance to immigrants, in whose offices on Friday investigators confiscated servers and hard drives, was stopped near the Teatralnaya subway stop.