Protest and shelling: Ukraine on 28 March 2022
A look back at a day of war in Kharkiv, set against the civilian resistance and anti-war protests of the days before it.
What did opposition to the invasion look like on 28 March 2022? In Kharkiv, it was a matter of survival: on that date Russian artillery damaged a school in the city, part of the Battle of Kharkiv in the northeastern offensive.
The days leading up to it had shown other forms of resistance. On 26 March 2022, protesters in Slavutych opposed the kidnapping of mayor Yurii Fomichev and Russia's occupation of the town. Russian soldiers released him afterwards. The episode belonged to a wider pattern of non-violent resistance in occupied Ukrainian towns, where residents organised protests and blocked the movement of Russian military equipment.
The cost of such defiance was high. As later accounts describe, the Russian military dispersed these protests, sometimes with live fire, injuring many people and killing some. Most of the large protests ended in March.
Voices abroad and in Russia
Solidarity was also expressed far from the front. On 26 March 2022, anti-war protesters gathered in London to stand with Ukraine.
Inside Russia, dissent carried its own risks. On 27 March 2022, the Russian artist Yevgenia Isayeva doused herself in fake blood during an anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg. Police later detained her.
Taken together, these reports show a war fought on several levels in the last days of March 2022: shells falling on a school in Kharkiv, unarmed residents confronting soldiers in an occupied town, and demonstrators in London and Saint Petersburg making their opposition public.
