Activist group Pussy Riot made headlines worldwide when they dramatically interrupted the World Cup Final in Moscow on July 15. But various lesser-known groups in St. Petersburg have been consistently campaigning in support of political prisoners held in Russia throughout the tournament, despite prohibitions from authorities.
Two of them have taken as a cause the release of Oleg Sentsov, a Ukrainian filmmaker who has been on a hunger strike in a Russian prison for over 60 days, protesting his own incarceration and calling for the release of some 70 other political prisoners held in Russia.
Sentsov’s case has inspired solidarity across the world, with activists and politicians from across Europe and North America expressing concern over his plight. But in Russia’s World Cup, raising the subject is a different matter. Public protest in any form was prohibited. Police packed host cities, making coordinating any large demonstration next to impossible.
That didn’t stop activists from ‘Democratic Petersburg’ and ‘Solidarity Saint Petersburg.’ The activists defied authorities, promoting the #SaveOlegSentsov campaign in both Russian and English, alerting international fans and St. Petersburg residents to his plight.
On July 10, seven people associated with Solidarity Saint Petersburg were detained by police. Facebook posts from the group say that the activists were standing on University Embankment, holding placards displaying their support for Ukrainian political prisoners.
“While you were cheering soccer here, Ukrainian mothers are mourning their children murdered in Donbas and elsewhere by the Putin-unleashed terrorists – Tell your governments to demand from Putin to stop his unannounced war against Ukraine” read one placard in English, held by the activist Olga Smirnova.
The same day, an unidentified package was found at St. Petersburg metro station, containing some 700 leaflets about the plight of Sentsov in English, according to Fontaka.ru, a St Petersburg news website.
Smirnova was later sentenced to five days imprisonment. This was her third arrest during the World Cup for demonstrating her support for Sentsov.
On July 3, the day of the Sweden-Switzerland match, she was among a group of activists arrested for handing out badges and leaflets in support of Ukrainian political prisoners on the city’s main street, Nevsky Prospect.
Earlier, Smirnova and another activist, Vladimir Shipitcyn had been detained for attempting to hand out around 400 leaflets.
Smirnova’s imprisonment did not dissuade others from continuing the awareness campaign. Activists continued to hand out #SaveOlegSentsov leaflets to international football fans on July 14, the day of the Belgium-England match.
Tatyana Dorutina, a representative of Democratic Petersburg, spoke with the Kyiv Post over Facebook. She said that the campaign has had some success: since protests are held on the central Nevsky Prospekt, many Petersburgers are becoming aware of the issue.
However, a representative of Solidarity St. Petersburg said many international fans the group approached reacted with “mostly indifference and fear for themselves.”
Nonetheless, they said the group would continue its work.
“I admire the courage of Oleg Sentsov, who dared to challenge the entire system of violence and lies alone”, Smirnova wrote on Facebook on July 15, after her release from prison.
That day, a political youth group, ‘Vesna’ (Spring), also took action in the city, hanging a banner on a bridge over the river Neva that read “This World Cup is filled by blood.”
On their VKontakte page, the group argued that the “luxurious holiday” for foreign fans has been organized against a backdrop of persecution and restriction of freedom of expression.
“In prison there are many innocent people. And for a long time, we have not heard anything about the hunger strike of the director Sentsov.”
