At the entrance to the mausoleum, dozens of activists erected an art installation featuring hundreds of Ukrainian flags and memorial crosses for Ukrainians killed during the Russian invasion. It also included miniature models of residential buildings destroyed by Russian bombing in various Ukrainian cities.
Pro-Ukrainian activists prevented the Russian ambassador to Poland from laying wreaths at the shrine of Soviet soldiers in Warsaw on Tuesday, which coincides with Russia’s celebrations of its victory over Nazi Germany in World War II.
At the entrance to the mausoleum, dozens of activists set up an art installation featuring hundreds of Ukrainian flags and memorial crosses for Ukrainians killed during the Russian invasion. It also included miniature models of residential buildings destroyed by Russian bombing in various Ukrainian cities.
Ambassador Sergei Andreev, who tried to lay a wreath at the shrine, was confronted by activists and forced to lay flowers at the entrance to the site.
“As you can see, we are facing an obvious disturbance of public order. Unfortunately, for the second time, we were unable to lay wreaths at the memorial dedicated to the fallen Soviet soldiers here in the anti-fascist war,” Andreev said.
Last year, Ambassador Andreev was also the target of protests in the same place after activists threw a red substance at the diplomat.
Victoria Pogrebnyak, an activist with the pro-Ukrainian organization Euromaidan, told AFP that the aim of the protest was to “show the results of the Russian war on Ukraine”.
“Of course, they will try to show that they are still fighting fascism (…) In fact, they are the ones who revived fascism and gave it a new name,” she added.
Activists of the aforementioned organization also called on Poland to expel the Russian ambassador. “Of course, we can’t demand anything, we can only ask, but our request (…) is to expel Russian diplomats from Poland, from the civilized world, because their place is no longer here,” Pogrebnyak said.