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Russian children were among thousands detained amid anti-war protests in several cities across the country in response to the seventh-day invasion of Ukraine.
Alexandra Arkhipova, a professor at the Russian State University of the Humanities in Moscow, who is currently a senior fellow at the Washington-based Wilson Center, shared several Facebook photos that allegedly show young children detained at a Moscow police station. .
According to her publication, two Russian women, Ekaterina Zavizion and her friend Olga Alter, and their five children in total were detained while lying down, running at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow.
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Children, boys and girls between the ages of 7 and 11, were photographed holding their hand-painted No War posters behind bars in an armored police van.
The mothers and children were then transported to the Presnenskoye police station, where officers confiscated their phones and shouted that the mothers could lose their parental rights and the children could be placed in the Russian version of the Child Protection Services, according to Arkhipova. .
Ilya Yashin, a Russian opposition politician, also tweeted the same photos of the detained children, who were seen locked up at the police station and then sitting at a desk in the police station.
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“Nothing out of the ordinary: just strollers behind an anti-war poster,” he tweeted on Tuesday. “This is Putin’s Russia, people. You live here.”
Yashin, whose deputies from the Krasnoselsk region have publicly backed the domestic anti-war movement and condemned President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine’s sovereign state, has criticized the regime for equating children painting anti-war posters with the equivalent of extremism.
The incident was also reported by the Moscow Times. Arkhipova provided an update hours later that women and children had been released and mothers were seeking a human rights lawyer amid possible fines and criminal charges pending in the local judiciary.
At least 7,398 people have been detained in connection with anti-war protests in Russia since February 24, according to the latest census on Wednesday from OVD-Info, an independent human rights media project dedicated to political persecution in Russia.
The number does not reveal how many children there were.
Crowds continue to take to the streets of Moscow, the historic capital of St. Petersburg and other cities despite mass arrests, while the war between Russia and Ukraine continues for seven days.
Russia’s opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has called on his country’s people to stage daily protests, calling President Vladimir Putin an “obviously crazy king” over his invasion of Ukraine.
In a long series of tweets posted by his spokesman on Wednesday, Navalny urged his people to avoid becoming a “nation of frightened silent people” and instead “fight for peace.”
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“I urge everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace,” he wrote. “Putin is not Russia. And if there’s one thing in Russia right now that you can be most proud of, it’s the 6,824 people who were detained because, without a phone call, they took to the streets with “No War” posters. “
Russian state media acknowledged on Wednesday that at least 500 Russian soldiers had been killed.
Fox News’s Peter Aiken contributed to this report.