In Brussels, they sang Ukraine’s national anthem in the rain. In Sydney, they gathered to pray. And in London, they hung paper angels from the ceiling of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, in honour of the children who have died in the war.
People around the world gathered on Friday to mark the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and demonstrate solidarity with the Ukrainian people.
In some cities, the mood among Ukraine’s supporters was defiant. Protesters in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York held up an effigy of President Vladimir Putin of Russia that had bloodied hands and bore a sign that read “murderer.”
In Buenos Aires, protesters — including many Russians who had fled their country and landed in Argentina because of its relatively open immigration policy — blasted rock anthems condemning the war and stamped their feet against metal barricades in front of the Russian embassy.
And in Berlin, a group of artists and activists managed to place a destroyed Russian tank, with its turret facing the Russian Embassy, on the city’s famous Unter den Linden boulevard. Organisers had campaigned for a year and taken city officials to court to make the display happen.
Elsewhere, the mood was more somber. Many of the hundreds of people gathered in front of the European Parliament in Brussels on Friday had tears in their eyes as the crowd shouted, “Slava Ukraini,” or “Glory to Ukraine!”
Inna Mishchenko, an artist from Kyiv, held a poster she had made last March after fleeing to Belgium. It featured a painting of a Ukrainian woman and a plea: “Don’t bomb Ukraine.”
In Britain, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak led a minute of silence to mark the anniversary. Outside the Russian Embassy in London, the street — which activists had a day earlier painted in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag — was set to be renamed “Kyiv Road” by the Westminster City Council.
A series of torchlight processions took place in several Italian cities, including in Naples, Milan and Rome.
Farther afield, marches and candlelight vigils were held across Australia. Several commemorative events were also planned in Thailand, and on Friday morning, a few dozen people draped in Ukrainian flags gathered in front of the Ukrainian Embassy in Bangkok. Some wore T-shirts that read, “I Stand with Ukraine.”
Ksenia Shatrova was in the crowd. A Ukrainian, she said she had come to Thailand to escape the hardship of a cold winter without consistent electricity, hot water and internet — but planned to return home soon.
A morning protest in front of the Russian Consulate in São Paulo, Brazil, was attended by Brazilians, Ukrainians and Russians alike.
“I didn’t want to stay in silence,” said Eugenii Oslavskií, who fled Russia with his wife and two daughters in March, just after the war started. He pointed to a poster in the background of Putin’s face and the words “Stop the War.”
In Russia, where it is illegal to call the war a war, people found subtler ways to protest on Friday. Residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg left flowers at monuments of the Ukrainian poets Larysa Kosach-Kvitka and Taras Shevchenko. By the afternoon, at least 20 people across the country had been detained for demonstrating against the war, rights groups reported.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
