Lyudmila Vasilyeva protests in St. Petersburg, 24 February 2025. Photo: Mediazona

A Russian octogenarian who lived through the siege of Leningrad as a child has been charged with discrediting the Russian army for a one-woman anti-war protest she mounted in St. Petersburg, independent news outlet Bumaga reported on Wednesday.

Lyudmila Vasilyeva, 83, was detained for staging a solo picket outside the Gostiny Dvor shopping centre in the centre of St. Petersburg on 24 February, the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where she held up a placard reading: “People, let’s stop the war! We are responsible for peace on planet Earth.”

Vasilyeva was summoned to appear at a police station to make a statement on 18 March and now faces civil charges.

A survivor of the almost 900-day Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II and a staunch critic of the war in Ukraine, Vasilyeva is a veteran of the St. Petersburg protest movement and was detained at several anti-war rallies in the city in 2022.

Vasilyeva was forced to drop out of the race to become the next governor of St. Petersburg after she failed to collect the required number of signatures for her nomination to be accepted in July. She pledged to continue her political work at the time, however, saying “As long as there is no peace, nothing good will happen either in Russia or in St. Petersburg”.