DOWN WITH THIS WAR ! DOWN WITH « NATIONAL UNITY » / SACRED UNION!

UKRAINE The People Face Up to the Russian Army

In Ukraine, the Russian army is bombing Kharkov and Mariupol… but is not advancing as quickly as the Kremlin thought. At the entrance to Energodar (Zaporizhia region), Russian tanks even had to retreat on 2 March in the face of several thousand inhabitants. Similar scenes are being repeated in the occupied cities: hundreds, sometimes thousands of Ukrainians shout to the occupiers (in Russian) « Damoi!” (go home!). The young Russian conscripts are bewildered and unnerved: they were told they were going to fight « Nazis », but they find themselves facing Ukrainian civilians, often Russianspeaking, who look like their parents and relatives. In Berdiansk (Mariupol region), on 1 March, soldiers and inhabitants faced off: « Why are you here?” the crowd asked. One of the soldiers stammers: « To bring peace!” A woman replies in Russian: « We had peace without you. Look: I speak Russian, nobody ever humiliated me for that!”