The queue to vote at the Russian embassy stretched for more than half a mile along Kensington Gardens on Sunday as hundreds of Russians arrived at midday as part of a worldwide act of protest to show their opposition to Vladimir Putin and the war in Ukraine.
It took a quarter of an hour to walk to the end of the queue past people bearing signs that read: “These ‘elections’ are fake”, “My president is Alexei Navalny” and “Vladimir Putin, go fuck yourself”.
Near the end of the queue, Maria Dorofeyeva, a young woman, stood with a sign that read: “Against Putin, against the war! For freedom, peace and fair elections!” The words Putin and war were dripping blood.
“I expected there to be a lot of people, but not this many. I didn’t know there were so many Russians in London,” she said. “It gives me some hope to see how many people are not happy with the dictatorship, the war, with what’s happening in Russia. And we want to stop it.”
The long queues appeared in Russian cities and world capitals, where the Russian diaspora has swelled as hundreds of thousands have arrived in a wave of emigration triggered by the war and mobilisation at home. There were long waits in Yerevan in Armenia and Almaty in Kazakhstan, where tens of thousands of Russians have emigrated, on Istanbul’s pedestrian Istikali Street, in Phuket in Thailand and in cities across Europe including Riga and The Hague.
The protest action, labelled “Noon against Putin”, was proposed by the St Petersburg politician Maxim Reznik and endorsed by Navalny before his death. He called it a safe way for Russians inside and outside the country to congregate publicly and show their opposition to the president.
“There are many people around you who are anti-Putin and anti-war, and if we come at the same time, our anti-Putin voice will be much louder,” said his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who has vowed to continue his protest work.
Navalnaya voted in Berlin on Sunday alongside other members of Navalny’s entourage and thousands of other Russians in a queue that snaked for more than a mile through central Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate and ended at the Holocaust Memorial. “Putin is a murderer!” they chanted at one point.
In London, hundreds more protesters stood directly across from the embassy behind banners declaring opposition to Putin and the war in Ukraine. This Will Pass by the band Russian punk band Pornofilmy and other protest songs played over a loudspeaker:
“All of it will pass, everything passes sometime
In a year, in a day, in an instant
Yesterday’s dictator will lie alone in the morgue
Now just a dead old man.”
Marina Ellis held a sign calling the elections “fake” against a backdrop of the blue and yellow of the Ukrainian flag.
“I’m boycotting the elections. I’m not going to vote … It’s not elections, it’s a farce,” she said. “I want British people to see that not all Russians support the war. They are absolutely against Putin … If you support Putin and you have access to all the information, then you’re just an idiot.”
“I’m very happily surprised,” she said of the turnout. “I’m happy to see all these people.”
Ksenia, 24, said she had voted in elections six years ago but had not re-registered this time because “now I feel like it makes no sense to vote any more … But still I wanted to do something today,” she said, to express her opposition to the war and to Putin. So she held a sign that read: “I was born under Putin. I won’t die under him.”
Gennady, a pensioner, held his fist in the air as Russians streamed past him toward the end of the queue. “I am happy to see so many thinking, smart people,” he said. “These people have come here to be counted.
“I think it’s a clever action and it’s probably all that can be done today. You see the way that protest is put down in Russia. But it can’t last this way for ever.”
Asked for his opinion of Putin, he said he believed his time in power would “always end in a war”. “Peaceful people are dying,” he said. “Ukrainians are dying. Russians are dying. Children are dying. It’s a crime against humanity.
“There are many Russians who think differently,” he said. “But they’re being crushed. And the propaganda that is poisoning the minds of families, of grandfathers and grandmothers, is destroying all of our lives. We must fight back.”
