A group of 5 Russian children were arrested by the Moscow police when they brought “No To War” signs and flowers at the Ukrainian embassy.

The children and two of their mothers brought the signs and flowers to the Ukrainian embassy, wanting nothing but peace, and got arrested for it. The youngest is seven and the oldest is eleven years old. That means that, according to the OVD-info website, they shouldn’t be kept for more than three hours for it to be legal. But they were kept in for the whole night. Their mothers were also threatened of losing their parental rights if they protested against the jailing.

“Phones were taken away from parents, and the policemen are shouting at the parents threatening these brave mums and their children, that the kids could be put into care right now, and these mothers would lose their parental rights,” said Russian sociologist and anthropologist Alexandra Arkhipova.

The children arrested were called Liza (11), Gosha (11), Matvey (9), David (7) and Sofya (7), along with their mothers, Ekaterina Zavizion and Olga Alter.

Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, used the images that circulated of the children to demonstrate what Russia is doing to control information across the country.

Kuleba said, “This is how scared the man is.” He was referring to the fact that Putin got children jailed because they didn’t want the war.

Another example of this is the arrest of Leningrad Siege survivor, Yelena Osipova, a 77 years old woman who protested against the Ukrainian war. The woman was taken away by the police for telling the truth. Eight police officers grabbed her, whilst the crowd, powerless, was yelling at the policemen to stop. 

These people are just a small portion of the thousands of people who were arrested on a weekly basis because of anti-war protests.

Putin, the Russian president, is trying to shut out the protests about the war. He doesn’t want the population to realize what is happening for real in Ukraine. Russians are not allowed to call it a war, nor do they get to express their desire for peace. Any culprit would be facing a 15 years prison sentence.

They are powerless against this conflict they didn’t ask for.