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Protesters called for an end to the war in Ukraine and the ouster of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a demonstration in Berlin on Sunday afternoon.
Three prominent opposition figures now in exile — Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya, and Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, both of whom were released in the August 1 prisoner exchange brokered between Russia and the US and its allies — led the march.
Parade through heart of Berlin, ending near Russian Embassy
Protesters carried placards calling for things like “victory in Ukraine,” “Putin’s downfall” and “freedom for Russia.” The procession marched holding a large red banner in front of them reading, in English: “No Putin. No war.”
“Several hundred people have answered this call to attend this protest, just near Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin,” DW’s Simon Young said live on site on Sunday.
“It’s an attempt to galvanize the Russians who live outside Russia, many of them here in Berlin and around Germany, who are wanting to express their opposition to Putin and their hopes for an end to the war,” Young said of the event.
Germany is home to around 235,000 Russian citizens, according to the national statistics office, in addition to millions of ethnic Germans who emigrated from Eastern Europe and people of ethnic Russian descent now holding German citizenship.
The protest began on Potsdamer Platz at around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, moving on via Friedrichstraße — the site of the Checkpoint Charlie crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War and still home to the “Russian House,” which Moscow describes as its “cultural embassy” in Berlin — towards its culmination near the Russian Embassy on Berlin’s renowned Unter den Linden avenue.
msh/dj (AFP, dpa, Reuters)