A sea of ​​people covers the square at the Hauptwache.

Many hold up posters: "How many lives does gas cost?", "Stand with Ukraine" and again and again: "Stop Putin".

Police estimate that 1,500 people came to demonstrate against the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Far more than the organizers had foreseen.

The Ukrainian Association in Frankfurt and the German-Ukrainian Association for Business and Science called for the rally.

Monica Ganster

Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

  • Follow I follow

The students Maxim, Kostyantyn and Chris came to Frankfurt from Gießen and Marburg.

Maxim is Russian, Kostyantyn is Ukrainian, Chris is German.

They seem to take it for granted that they are demonstrating here together for peace.

"We are brother peoples.

But right now we're living in a family that doesn't get together," says Chris.

He also speaks Russian and has relatives in Kiev: "We're in the middle of exams, but on a day like today you can't sit at home."

Russians and Ukrainians

And how do the parents view their involvement?

"They're standing behind me," says Kostyantyn, smiling, pointing his thumb at the older couple behind him.

"My parents are here somewhere, too," says Maxim.

The young men, aged 21 and 22, have known each other for five years.

They spoke to each other in a café, the Russian language was their bridge.

The bond has held to this day.

Were you surprised by the events?

Maxim follows the media in his home country: "The Russian press is like a thermometer: it tests how hot it has gotten".

In the last few days, the tone has gotten sharper every day, recently there was no more talk of Ukrainians, only Nazis and other insults.

The population will be whipped.

One sentence can be heard again and again that evening: "We didn't think it was possible." That Putin provokes, that he threatens and manipulates, that's nothing new.

But Chris only considered an attack on the neighboring country possible when he woke up on the morning of February 22 and heard the news that Russia had recognized Ukraine's two eastern regions, Donetsk and Luhansk, as independent states.

Daryna also feels overwhelmed by the events.

She is 38 years old, has been living in Frankfurt for 20 years, did an apprenticeship here, married a German, they have a little boy.

"As we stand here, my parents are sitting in the basement of their house in Ukraine and they are being shot at." Can't they flee?

"Two weeks ago that would have been possible, now the tanks are rolling in from all sides.

And all I can do is pray,” she says calmly.

For her, the impossible now seems to be possible: “Who says that Putin stops at the Polish border?

Or then in front of the German one?”

Somewhere in the middle of the crowd, someone is speaking into a microphone, too softly to carry messages overhead.

The Ukrainian Consul General Vadym Kostiuk, who met with leading state politicians in the Hessian State Chancellery in Wiesbaden that afternoon, is there.

Frankfurt's Mayor Peter Feldmann (SPD), State Secretary for Federal and European Affairs Uwe Becker (CDU) and Vice-President of the European Parliament Nicola Beer (FDP) also came to express their solidarity.

You can hardly hear them.

But then someone shouts something loudly across the square and the crowd replies in their own language: "Free Ukraine."

The weather changes, first light rain, then the wind whips large drops in the faces.

The spectators at the edge of the crowd flee under the adjacent roofs.

In the middle of the square, hundreds wrapped in blue and yellow flags sing the Ukrainian national anthem in the snow flurry that sets in.