Russian opposition-in-exile holds Berlin protest march

Protesters called for an end to the war in Ukraine and the ouster of Russian President Vladimir Putin in a demonstration in Berlin on Sunday afternoon. 

Three prominent opposition figures now in exile — Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya, and Vladimir Kara-Murza and Ilya Yashin, both of whom were released in the August 1 prisoner exchange brokered between Russia and the US and its allies — led the march. 

Parade through heart of Berlin, ending near Russian Embassy

Protesters carried placards calling for things like "victory in Ukraine," "Putin's downfall" and "freedom for Russia." The procession marched holding a large red banner in front of them reading, in English: "No Putin. No war."

"Several hundred people have answered this call to attend this protest, just near Potsdamer Platz in the heart of Berlin," DW's Simon Young said live on site on Sunday. 

"It's an attempt to galvanize the Russians who live outside Russia, many of them here in Berlin and around Germany, who are wanting to express their opposition to Putin and their hopes for an end to the war," Young said of the event. 

Germany is home to around 235,000 Russian citizens, according to the national statistics office, in addition to millions of ethnic Germans who emigrated from Eastern Europe and people of Russian descent now holding German citizenship.

The protest began on Potsdamer Platz at around 2 p.m. local time on Sunday, moving on via Friedrichstraße — the site of the Checkpoint Charlie crossing between East and West Berlin during the Cold War and still home to the "Russian House," which Moscow describes as its "cultural embassy" in Berlin — towards its culmination near the Russian Embassy on Berlin's renowned Unter den Linden avenue. 

Navalnaya widowed in February, Kara-Murza and Yashin freed in August exchange

Yulia Navalnaya has been thrust into the limelight in Russia's opposition since the news of her husband Alexei Navalny's death in a Siberian prison camp in February.

She has since said she hopes to take up a leadership role in Russia's opposition from abroad. 

Vladimir Kara-Murza was a protege of murdered opposition leader Boris Nemtsov and head of the now-outlawed Open Russia NGO founded by fellow exiled politician and business magnate Mikhail Khodorkovsky. 

Himself a survivor of alleged past poisoning attempts, like Navalny, Kara-Murza was jailed amid a series of charges based on his comments opposing the 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. 

Ilya Yashin used to lead the opposition People's Freedom Party (PARNAS) in Russia and was also jailed soon after the invasion of Ukraine, convicted on charges of discrediting the country's military in his criticism of Ukrainian civilian deaths in Bucha on the outskirts of Kyiv.

Both of the opposition leaders left Russia as part of the prisoner exchange on August 1.

msh/dj (AFP, dpa, Reuters)