Russian citizens are demonstrating against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. There have been demonstrations in St. Petersburg and Moscow, and 50 other cities. However, citizens do not have the right to gather and protest in Russia. Although the Russian Federation’s constitution (1993) allowed “freedom of assembly” enabling citizens the right to gather peacefully, without weapons, and to hold meetings, rallies, demonstrations, marches and pickets, new laws were passed in 2004 which removed the right to protest. Today, all around Russia people have taken to the streets to protest the invasion of its Ukrainian neighbors.

Ukraine was an integral state in the former Soviet Union, but is now an independent country, as is Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, and the other former republics of the USSR.

Reports in the press and on social media show that people are out protesting the invasion. But they are being stopped and arrested for breaking the law. According to reports at CNN, more than 2,000 people have been arrested and I expect that number to increase as more and more Russian citizens protest the invasion.

Protests in Russia are crucial because the only way out of the Russia/Ukraine war is at a table. Citizens of Russia who are protesting one of the reasons that Russia has asked Ukraine to meet in Belarus tomorrow. Katrina vanden Heuvel, former publisher of The Nation said that “de-escalation and negotiation are the only way out of this crisis.”

Thirty years ago I was involved in negotiation with Soviet psychologists and educators from the USSR Academy of Pedagogical Sciences. Collaboration sitting around a conference room or dinner table is the only way to solve human problems that keep us apart. For most of the Americans in this room, this was the first time that they met with Soviet citizens.

The people that you see protesting in the streets of St. Petersburg would no doubt have been involved with us in the 1980s and 1990s because we developed relationships with ordinary Russians, teachers, engineers, laborers, mothers and fathers of the children we worked with.

I believe that Mr. Putin has miscalculated not only the citizens in Ukraine, but citizens all across Russia. Zola Sheftalovich, reporter for Politico, wrote that Putin “has vastly underestimated and misunderstood Ukrainians and their president.” As she reminds us, Putin has lost touch with ordinary Russians who are not limited to state run media for their news and information.

Putin and Trump

Yet, here in the United States we have people, all of them Republicans, who endorse and support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Ex-president Donald Trump admires Mr. Putin and said he is “pretty smart.” Trump said this about Putin’s invasion of Ukraine:

“He’s taken over a country for $2 worth of sanctions,” he said, “taking over a country — really a vast, vast location, a great piece of land with a lot of people — and just walking right in.”

Trump Praises Putin, Leaving Republicans in a Bind, NY Times, Feb. 24, 2022

Perhaps this is not surprising. Trump caressed Putin during his four years in office. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are autocrats and nationalists. It’s difficult not to see Trump and Putin other than through the lens of authoritarianism. We see this now in the invasion of Ukraine. Like Donald Trump, Putin has surrounded himself with political allies, bureaucrats, and state run media. Some have said that he has isolated himself.

Putin’s isolation is no different that the isolation of Donald Trump, especially during his last year in office. He relied only on a host of sycophants who supported every criminal act that Trump carried out. There is great danger in Ukraine, and there is a continuing danger in the United States as Republicans who are riding on Trump’s coattails continue with their pathetic big lie.