I was born in Saint Petersburg, or Leningrad as we called it in the good old days. Until February 24, the last antiwar protest I attended was almost twenty years ago, back when George W. Bush and Tony Blair were planning the invasion of Iraq. I was a schoolboy in Britain, and we sat at the top of the football pitch and refused to go to class. True, most of us didn’t understand the geopolitical situation too well — some were just trying to bunk off biology. But I knew enough to tell that if Saddam Hussein really did have weapons of mass destruction, surely that would be a good reason not to attack him?

With that experience in mind, earlier this year I also didn’t believe all those warnings that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, coming from US spooks and the Pentagon. They had lied about Iraq — and I’m still anxiously awaiting Donald Trump’s pee tape and who knows what else.

Then, on February 24, I found myself at another protest, except this time it was on Nevsky Prospekt in Saint Petersburg. Instead of angry teachers, we faced the OMON riot squad who dragged us away at random, including a mother carrying a baby and an elderly woman who survived the siege of Leningrad. That night, more than 1,700 people were arrested in fifty-three cities across Russia.