© Keystone/LAURENT GILLIERON
Nearly 400 people gathered at the end of the day on Tuesday at the Parc de Milan, sous-gare, in Lausanne to show their opposition to the war in Ukraine and their solidarity with the Ukrainian people. The appeal had been launched by a Vaudois committee created at the beginning of March.
The demonstration had been expressly organized on the sidelines of the International Commodity Trading Summit, which is being held from March 21 to 23 at the Beau-Rivage Palace in Lausanne and organized in the Vaud capital since 2012. Authorized by the police, the procession s It was then moved to Ouchy on the edge of the lake.
Banners, placards and flags, in particular in Ukrainian colors, swarmed in the park from 5.30 p.m. It read: “Stop the War”, “No War”, “Stop Putin”, “Putin in the Gulag” or even “Poutin Terrorist”. Some 400 people attended, according to a count by Keystone-ATS.
Immediate withdrawal of Russian forces
In a public statement, the members of the “Committee of Solidarity with the Ukrainian People and with Russian Opponents to the War” demanded the “immediate withdrawal from Ukrainian territory of Russian occupying forces”. The collective, created on March 1 in Lausanne, also demanded sanctions once morest the firms participating in the financing of the Russian military effort.
He also calls for a “real control” of multinationals and the price of raw materials and a “total and immediate disengagement” of Switzerland in the purchase of Russian oil. He also wants the “unconditional” abolition of the Ukrainian debt.
The committee, supported by numerous associations, NGOs and political parties, is still calling for the expropriation of the sequestered assets of firms and individuals linked to Vladimir Putin’s regime. It demands that these assets be used for “the reconstruction and upkeep of all refugees from the Russian wars”.
On March 3, the same collective organized its first gathering on Place St-François in Lausanne, attracting some 500 people.
