MINNEAPOLIS — One wintry day, a new Russian immigrant named Artem came to the Minnesota State Capitol to protest the war in Ukraine. Then a police siren sounded afar, and he grew fearful.
Was he really free, even in America?
Artem thought back to that day last summer in his Siberian hometown, when he ambled around the city square holding a sign against the Russia-Ukraine war. It was illegal in Russia to oppose the invasion, but Artem knew his future grandchildren would ask what he had done about it. "I wanted to tell them this is what I've done so my conscience would be clear," he recalled through an interpreter. The Russian police came to arrest Artem, and he fled the country months later.
