The Story of Ivan and Anna from Popovka

On February 23, 2023 – the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – Ivan Kunitsky left his village of Popovka to stage a one-man antiwar protest in the nearby city of Omsk. That very evening, a neighbor attacked Ivan’s home, where he lived with his pregnant wife and two teenage daughters.

That evening, Kunitsky, a 42-year-old electrician, received a telephone call from a friend, who told him: “A policeman came to visit me and was asking about you. He said they were going to make your life ‘interesting.’” Later, the Kunitskys found out that police officers had visited many of their neighbors in Popovka to talk about them, but only the one friend warned him, and only because the friend’s wife asked him to. “Vanya, if they come to your place and the topic of friends comes up, you can say that you and I are no longer friends, right?” he asked at the end of the call. Ivan nodded knowingly.

THE PREVIOUS DAY, Kunitsky had seen a live broadcast of the government’s rally and concert at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, where children from Mariupol were paraded onstage.