Tasya, 19, stood with her companions on a frigid morning in St. Petersburg, Russia, joining demonstrators chanting "Nyet Voine!" ("No War!") against Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
"It's always better to stand with others...to look over your shoulder in case you need to run," Tasya, who requested that her last name not be published for her protection, added. Tasya stated that her friends eventually left the protest to go home or somewhere else to warm up, leaving her standing alone in the street.
"Then a group of cops walked past me...and then one of them looked at me, and they turned around, walked towards me, and detained me," she recalled of the demonstration on February 24.
Protests are still taking place across Russia as young individuals, as well as middle-aged and even retired people, go to the streets to protest a military confrontation authorized by their President – a decision they allege they had no say in.
They're finally finding their voice. However, Russian officials are determined to silence any public opposition to the invasion on Ukraine. Police break up protests almost as quickly as they start, taking some protestors away and roughing up others.
According to an independent organization that analyzes human rights violations in Russia, police arrested at least 350 anti-war protestors in St. Petersburg on Wednesday, bringing the total number of protesters detained or arrested to 7,624 since the invasion began.
Although opposition to Russian President Vladimir Putin's military operation in Ukraine is still limited, it is coming from unexpected sources.
According to the Financial Times, one of Russia's richest individuals, billionaire businessman Mikhail Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, termed the bloodshed a "tragedy," adding that "war can never be the answer" – but he stopped short of publicly criticizing Putin.
"If I make any political remark that is inappropriate in Russia, it will have very clear consequences for the company, our customers, our creditors, and our stakeholders," Fridman stated.
Oleg Deripaska, another oligarch, said on his Telegram channel: "Peace is extremely vital! The talks should start as soon as feasible."
Meanwhile, members of Russia's "intellectsia" – academics, writers, journalists, and others – have issued public condemnations of the war, including a rare "open letter" to Putin signed by 1,200 students, faculty, and staff of MGIMO University, the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and producing the majority of Russia's government and foreign service elite.
The signers state that they are "vehemently opposed to the Russian Federation's military actions in Ukraine."
"We believe it is morally immoral to sit on the sidelines and remain silent while people die in a neighboring state. They are dying as a result of people who chose armaments over peaceful diplomacy "According to the letter
The letter is intensely personal, with signers explaining: "Many of us have friends and relatives who live in the areas where military activity is taking place. But war has not only come to them; it has come to each of us, and the consequences will be felt by our children and grandchildren. Many generations of future diplomats will be required to repair lost faith in Russia and good relations with our neighbors." A representative of MGIMO did not respond to CNN's request for comment.
According to The Washington Post, the head of a Russian delegation to a United Nations meeting on climate change, Oleg Anisimov, reportedly apologized for the military operation "on behalf of all Russians who were not able to prevent this conflict," adding that "those who know what is happening fail to find any justification for the attack."
However, many Russians are unaware of what is going on in Ukraine. State-controlled television nearly never displays stories of Russian bombings and shellings in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, instead focusing on so-called Ukrainian "nationalists" and "neo-fascists."
Many Russians are still coming to terms with the notion that war is truly taking place, nearly a week after Russian military swept into Ukraine. For weeks, US and other Western officials had warned of an impending strike, but Russian state media, particularly television news shows, derided those warnings, stating Moscow had no intention of initiating military action against Kyiv. In a CNN poll conducted before the invasion, only 13% of Russians thought a Russian strike was likely, and two out of three (65%) anticipated the tensions between Russia and Ukraine to be resolved peacefully.
However, Russian young people, such as 25-year-old Arina, who lives in Moscow, do not watch television; in fact, she hasn't watched it in seven years. She's surfing the web, reading blogs and watching vloggers. She hasn't yet participated in protests, but she has seen young people on the street holding "No to War" placards on their backpacks or bags in "silent protests."
She, too, is perplexed as to why this war in Ukraine is taking place and what it would imply for her life as a young Russian.
"It is really impossible to forecast anything, of course, the situation is dreadful," Arina, who requested that CNN only use her first name for her protection, told CNN. "There is a lot of anxiety about the future, a lot of fear, among some of my friends, because we don't know how it will affect us."
Arina's mother, on the other hand, has an entirely different perspective: "My mum believes everything she sees on TV," Arina explains.
"She believes that Putin's action was necessary since there are armaments encircling the country...there is a threat from the West, which is why Putin is doing this."
Arina claims she even saw a guide on a Russian online magazine for students, Doxa, that suggested how young Russians might discuss the Ukraine conflict with their parents and others. "We realize how upsetting it can be when your parents, friends, colleagues, grandfathers and grandmothers become war fans," it says.
"As a result, we decided to create a guide for discussing the war with people who justify it. In our book, you'll find answers to 17 of the most common arguments propagated by propaganda and frequently heard in fights "It stated.
Arina caught it just in time. The magazine said on February 28 that the Russian government agency in charge of communications, information technology, and mass media asked that Doxa remove the advice from its website.
Arina says she and her mother "had a very fierce argument."
"She just doesn't accept my position and thinks I'm a pro-Westerner, that I don't understand anything. She doesn't believe what I say, I don't believe what she says...We have very different sources of information: I learn everything from the independent media, which have mostly long been blocked in Russia, and she watches TV."
As Arina and her friends follow news about Ukraine on social media, they see the revulsion among many in the West toward Putin's decision to attack Ukraine. Russians, she says, have contradictory, polar-opposite reactions.
"The first one is, everyone says, 'Yes, we should be ashamed.' The second one is, 'No, let's not be ashamed of ourselves and let's not pin decisions on ourselves that were not made by us.'"
But both sides agree on one thing, Arina says: They want the international community to know "that the people are not their President, and we didn't choose this."
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