Anti-war march in Berlin led by Navalny's team sparks tensions over Russian tricolor flag

Anti-war march in Berlin led by Navalny's team sparks tensions over Russian tricolor flag

On Sunday, November 17, 2024, Navalny's team, led by his wife Yulia and Russian opposition figures such as Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, held an anti-war march in Berlin

Ahead of the column, they carried a banner with the words: “No Putin. No war,” according to the Vot Tak project.

One of the activists, named Luka Andreev, came with a Russian state flag. The man said he believed the tricolor was the country's historic flag and did not associate it with Vladimir Putin.

Volunteers from the organizational team labeled the activist a provocateur but did not expel him from the rally. However, some participants, including those speaking in Ukrainian, called for the removal of the Russian tricolor, with some threatening to block the convoy.

“Take away your fascist tricolor,” they said.

Oppositionists holding the Russian tricolor asked Ukrainians in response, "Why aren't you at the front?" In turn, German police officers warned the group of protesters outraged by the tricolor about the possibility of detentions and instructed them to move away.

“Later, the Russian flag disappeared from the column of demonstrators, but the white, blue, and white flags (flags of the new Russia - ed.) remained at the front of the column,” Vot Tak notes.

Anton Mikhalchuk, an employee of the Free Russia Foundation and one of the leaders of the column, forcefully seized the flag from activist Andreev and pushed him away. Afterward, the flag was handed to another individual who removed it from the rally.

As noted, Andreev was carrying the flag in the front rows, flying right behind the organizers, so he was visible in almost all the photos.

There were also flags of Ukraine at the rally.

Berlin police said that 1,800 people attended the anti-war rally, Ateo Breaking reports.

What the Ukrainian ambassador says

Ukraine's Ambassador to Germany, Oleksiy Makeyev, criticized the Russian anti-war march in Berlin. In his opinion, it is nothing more than “a walk devoid of dignity and consequences,” he wrote in an article for Die Zeit published on Saturday, November 16.

According to the diplomat, the anti-war march of Russians in Berlin is a PR campaign, “the target audience of which is not the Russian population, but the German media and politicians.” In this case, the struggle is “not against the Russian regime, but for Germany's attention.”

At the same time, this action only shows the weakness of the Russian opposition, which blames only one person for the outbreak of the war - Putin, Makeyev believes. 

The Ukrainian diplomat emphasized that “it has never been Putin's war alone.”

“In the Russian consciousness, critical introspection is constantly being replaced by imperialistic preoccupation with itself,” the Ukrainian ambassador writes, accusing the organizers of the march of seeking to avoid collective responsibility. 

According to Makeyev, “Ukraine and the war are only secondary issues in the lives of Russian anti-war activists.”

• In October, Yulia Navalnaya announced her intention to run for the Russian presidency.