Mikhail Pushkinsky is detained by police officers in St. Petersburg, Russia, 30 October 2025. Photo: Bumaga
A Russian pensioner was detained in St. Petersburg on Thursday for wearing a blue and yellow badge in support of Ukraine at a gathering to mark the annual Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Political Repression, according to independent outlet Bumaga.
Mikhail Pushkinsky, 78, reportedly refused to remove the badge, which bore the inscription “peace to Ukraine”, when asked to do so by police, after which he was detained and taken to a local police station, although it’s unclear on what grounds specifically.
According to SOTAvision, this is not the first time that Pushkinsky had been spotted publicly wearing his pro-Ukrainian badge, having also done so in September at the funeral of St. Petersburg dissident Tatyana Goricheva.
Pushkinsky’s detention is the latest incident in a series of moves restricting the memorialisation of Soviet-era political oppression in contemporary Russia.
Similar memorial events took place in cities across the country on Thursday, with participants in the city of Ufa in the Volga region republic of Bashkotostan reportedly harassed by plain clothes police, while in the western Siberian city of Tyumen, participants were denied access to memorial in the grounds of Tyumen State University after the police locked the gates.
The Moscow commemoration saw flowers being laid at the famous Solovetsky Stone on Lubyanka Square, outside the former KGB headquarters, which now serve as the home to its descendent, the FSB. The stone, which was transported to Moscow from the Solovetsky Islands in Russia’s far north where the first permanent Soviet prison camp was established in 1923, was placed on Lubyanka square in 1990 to honour the victims of Soviet-era oppression.
