For many members of Australia’s Russian diaspora, campaigning vigorously for Ukraine is not just an option, it’s a necessity.
It’s 10:30am on one of the worst days of one of the worst weeks of weather in Sydney’s recorded history, and a small group of Russians is gathered on the pavement opposite their country’s consulate, in the city’s leafy, well-to-do suburb of Woollahra. It’s gloomy and cold and raining Biblically, with a sideways wind that snatches spitefully at their raincoats and umbrellas. But the Russians remain dauntless, chanting “Stop the war!” and “Putin is a criminal!” and “Shame on you.
Such protests are increasingly common, both here and overseas, as the world recoils in horror at the actions of the Russian government. The war, which began when President Vladimir Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine on February 24, has so far cost thousands of lives and caused Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.
Each group came with baggage, literal and metaphorical. Some émigrés, such as the post-World War II generation, were more conservative, and remained closely affiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church. They, and to some extent their children and grandchildren, are more inclined to look favourably upon Putin, whose mission, as they see it, is to restore to Russia its grand, pre-Soviet empire, with the church and traditional values at its heart.
“We need to make a stand. Russians have been on the fence too long. They pretend they can be neutral, but that’s not possible any more.” Soon after, Kuzmin and his fellow protesters launched a Facebook group whose Russian name translates, rather tepidly, as Reasonable Russians in Australia and New Zealand. At the same time, another group of Russians in Adelaide was setting up the Svoboda Alliance . Kuzmin headed up Svoboda’s Victorian arm, while also helping manage the Reasonable Russians Facebook page.
Outside Russia, Kirill’s claims caused shock and bewilderment. The head of the Russian Orthodox Churches in Western Europe, Metropolitan John of Dubna, wrote an open letter to Kirill, describing the war as “cruel and murderous” and asking that he intervene to have it stopped. Kirill was unmoved.Putin in 2015 with Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church. Kirill claimed, bizarrely, that the invasion was about stopping the tide of “gay parades” from the West.
To many Russians, the church’s fence-sitting is unacceptable. “The majority of my parishioners are against the war,” says one Russian Orthodox priest. “Many of them are protesting against it. So they are frustrated by the church’s position, and they are disillusioned.” During the Cold War, the priest tells me, the church took a principled stand against the Soviet Union. “The church was seen as a voice of freedom, and it attracted a lot of people because of that.
In 2008, he and his wife and two young daughters, aged six and two, landed in Sydney, with $US45,000 in savings. They knew no one except for a Russian acquaintance who let Pavlenko and his family sleep in a spare room for two weeks. Everything was a struggle. Pavlenko had canvassed Australian employers before he left, but none would give him a job without a face-to-face interview. Without a job it was hard to rent a home; without a home address, he couldn’t get a SIM card.
Another thing that struck him was how much attention Australians paid to food. “They were always talking about what they were eating, and how to cook this or that dish.” At first, it struck him as frivolous. “In Russia, we had more important things to talk about than food, like politics and war and financial difficulties.
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