Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Russian activist Lyudmila Vasilieva, an 84-year-old survivor of the siege of Leningrad during World War II, was fined by a court after protesting the war of Russia in Ukraine.
During her hearing in St. Petersburg on Friday, G -jj Vasileva was ordered to pay 10,000 rubles ($ 126; 93 pounds) for “discredit” to the Russian army.
The accusations associated with the handwritten poster, which she held earlier this year, which reads: “People, let’s stop the war. We are responsible for the peace of planet Earth. With love, Lyudmila Vasilieva, a child of Leningrad’s blockade.”
Russia has destroyed criticism of its military actions in Ukraine after its neighbor began a full invasion of its neighbor in 2022.
In an interview with AFP, before hearing at the Quibishevski District Court on Friday, she said she was experiencing “bitterness” and “injured” over the fate of her country.
“I have always been a person who is not indifferent from childhood. I have always been on the side of the weak,” she said.
She was greeted by dozens of supporters outside the courtroom. Her footage showed her that she was holding flowers and getting applause.
The 84-year-old survived the siege of Leningrad as a very young child with his four siblings and a mother.
Leningrad’s military blockade from Nazi Germany lasted 872 days, from September 8, 1941 to January 27, 1944. About 800,000 people were killed by starvation, cold and fire by Nazi troops.
Speaking to AFP, D -Ja Vasilieva recalled that her mother told her, “We will go through everything as long as there is no war.”
The name of the city of Leningrad was restored in its previous name, St. Petersburg, in 1991.
D -Ja Vasilieva has long been a critic of the war of Russia, with Ukraine being detained several times in 2022.
Last year, she ran as governor of St. Petersburg, but failed to collect the required number of signatures for the nomination, as reported by the BBC Russian.
The Russian law, which sanctioned “discredit” the army, is applied to a wide variety of actions that the Kremlin interprets as a support for Ukraine or criticism of the war.
These include displaying anti -war posters, with messages ranging from “no war” to eight asterisks – the number of Russian letters that spell “no war”.
The war in Ukraine has been raging for more than three years, and military experts have evaluated between 165,000 and 235,000 Russian officers have been killed after a full -scale invasion.
Ukraine last updated its casualties in December 2024, when President Volodimir Zelenski acknowledged 43,000 Ukrainian military deaths. Western analysts believe that this figure is an underestimation.