Watch protesters fill Europe’s most popular tourist spots to give ‘courage’ to Ukraine

Dressed in the blue and yellow of Ukraine’s flag and bearing posters crying “Stop War” and “Putin is a killer”, hundreds of thousands of people took to Europe’s streets over the weekend to show their solidarity with Ukraine.

Places which are usually packed full of tourists like Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Wenceslas Square in Prague and outside Downing Street in London transformed into demonstration grounds and were instead filled with their own city’s residents.

The demonstrations had multiple aims: to show solidarity with Ukraine, to protest against Russia and to call for their countries to intervene or impose harsher sanctions on Russia.

Thousands of locals flocked to tourist sites
In the German capital, police estimated the turnout to be at least 100,000, while Prague drew 70,000 and in Amsterdam 15,000 people gathered in Dam Square.

Organisers of the Berlin protest put the numbers at five times the police estimate, with demonstrators massing between the Brandenburg Gate and the Victory column – a stone’s throw from the city’s Russian embassy.

“It’s actually a gesture of helplessness, because there’s nothing more we can do, but it’s the least we can do,” says Bettina von Kleist, a retired German writer who joined Berlin’s solidarity march.

“As Putin continues to say that this is a peace mission, I think that if the world stands up, this will at least be disproved. And that the images, which will also be seen in Ukraine and other countries, will give courage.”

In Switzerland, thousands of people gathered across the country. In Geneva about 1,000 flocked to the ‘Broken Chair’ – a large sculpture symbolising the civilian victims of war – outside the United Nations’ European headquarters.