Zelenskyy to Russians: "If you remain silent now, you will pay for this war with your poverty"

Iryna Balachuk – Sunday, 6 March 2022, 12:25

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy stated that those Russian citizens who today are afraid or do not want to rally against the war will have to pay for it with their poverty.

Source: Zelensky’s video address on 6 March

According to Zelensky: "Russian citizens! For you, this is not just a fight for peace in Ukraine! It is a fight for your own country, too. For the best that it had to offer. For the freedom that you felt. For the wealth that you experienced.

If you remain silent now, you will only have your poverty speaking on your behalf in the future. And repression will answer it. Don’t be silent."

Details: Zelenskyy stressed that Ukrainians "have already fought for our future, and now we are fighting for our present, fighting over where the border will be drawn between life and bondage."

He noted that Russian citizens are making the same choice now: "between life and bondage."

According to Zelenskyy: "This is a time when we can still overcome evil without irreparable losses. A time when the civic position you take is punished by dismissal or by a paddy wagon, but not the Gulag. Punished by material losses, not by shooting. Don’t waste this opportunity. Social media, friends, acquaintances, people you don’t know, colleagues, relatives: they must hear you! We are Ukrainians – we want peace!"

Significance: Russian soldiers who have been sent to fight in Ukraine are deciding to surrender. Ukraine is giving them medical assistance and opportunities to get in touch with their families. Ukraine is also gathering information about the prisoners of war and publishing their names on a dedicated website, so that their relatives can find their children, parents, and grandchildren. In calls to their families, prisoners tell them that they are treated well, given medical care, fed, and kept warm. This is all recorded in photos and on videos.

Meanwhile, Russia is blocking its citizens’ access to truthful information; it blocks Ukrainian websites that publish photos and videos of Russian soldiers killed and captured on our land, while at the same time it does nothing to allow Russian mothers to bring home their dead sons. It broadcasts propaganda on its TV channels about the alleged "Nazis and drug addicts" in Ukraine and at the same time detains people en masse protesting against the war.

In Russia, the Search for Your Own website (200rf.com), created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine to publish data on captured and killed Russian servicemen in Ukraine, has been blocked. But Russians have been able to search for their relatives through the eponymous Telegram channel. However, on 3 March, Roskomnadzor (Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications) sent a request to Telegram to remove services that collect information about Russian servicemen captured or killed in Ukraine.

On 4 March, Roskomnadzor blocked the social network Facebook in Russia. And then Twitter and YouTube.

Also on 4 March, the Russian State Duma passed a law concerning "fakes" that allows Russia to imprison people for speaking the truth about the war.

As a result of this law, a number of neutral and opposition media outlets in Russia have suspended their work, among them Rain TV, the Echo of Moscow radio station, and Znak.com.

Earlier, Roskomnadzor demanded the removal of materials from Novaya Gazeta, Mediazona, Rain TV and other media outlets that tell the truth about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and call what is happening is called war, invasion, or attack.

On 6 March, anti-war rallies took place in Russian cities, during which protesters were detained en masse.

Background: On the night of 24 February, Russia attacked Ukraine. It is massively shelling residential neighbourhoods throughout Ukraine.