Thousands of people gathered in one of Florence’s largest squares on Saturday to show their support for Ukraine and to hear President Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s videotaped message.
Florence and Kyiv have been linked since the 1960s, when the Ukrainian capital provided aid to the Tuscan city in the aftermath of a disastrous flood.
In Piazza Santa Croce, thousands waved blue and yellow flags as church bells tolled 17 times, one for each day since Russia invaded Ukraine in what Moscow refers to as a “special operation.”
Flower crowns were worn by a number of Ukrainian women in the crowd as a symbol of peace.
“Russians are living under a dictatorship and don’t understand why they came to ruin our cities and slaughter our children,” said Lesia Mykhailenko, a lawyer in Florence who was born in Donetsk.
“I can’t dislike them,” she concluded, “since our ties have endured for centuries.”
Zelenskiy said that 79 children had been killed in Ukraine since the start of the war in a speech televised to dozens of European cities taking part in a day of protests, and he urged for harsher sanctions against Moscow as well as a no-fly zone.
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