As thousands of protestors arrived at the Russian embassy in west London this afternoon, a slow, mournful Ukrainian folk song drifted through the air.
The singers – dressed in traditional Ukrainian attire, blood-red ribbons tied around their heads – sang of loss, resilience, and a country still at war.
Three years on from the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the crowd that gathered in London was not just there to mourn but to demand action.
Blue and yellow flags snapped in the wind. Signs ranged from the solemn – “never forget Bucha” – to the provocative: “We will rave on Putin’s grave.”
Among the protestors were many Ukrainians who had fled Russian bombs.
Vlad was just 17 years old when his city of Mariupol was besieged by Putin’s forces in the early months of the war.
“I can never go back,” he told me. “I saw too much. Bodies in the streets. People burned alive in their homes.”
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Even now, he is still confident of a just resolution to the war: “We have to continue to fight. To speak up for truth, defend our traditions and our culture.”
Others were less optimistic in the face of Donald Trump’s very public courting of Vladimir Putin.
One man with a sign depicting Trump as a puppet in Putin’s hands, who didn’t give his name, said: “I feel like I watch the news every day and it just seems to go from bad to worse. I didn’t think Trump would stoop so low. But the things he’s said and the actions he’s taken just go beyond belief.”
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Several Labour politicians spoke at the rally, among them Emily Thornberry, chair of the foreign affairs select committee.
She said Britain needed to stand “visibly and unwaveringly” with Ukraine, and sought common ground with the United States.
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“We don’t really know what Trump’s terms are,” she told Sky News. “There’s no detail. So we have to just step back and say we agree we should stop the war. It’s just that we don’t want to capitulate to Putin. What we need is a way of finishing this war which is fair.”
As the march wound its way through the streets of west London, chants of “Slava Ukraini” rang out. The crowd’s mood was defiant and clear in their response to President Trump: there is only one aggressor, one dictator in this war, and he is in Moscow rather than Kyiv.
