'Give Peace a Chance': Solidarity with Ukraine

On Friday morning, many radio stations across Europe played John Lennon and Yoko Ono's peace hymn "Give Peace a Chance" at the same time. Stations in Germany, France, Italy, Latvia, Iceland, Poland and Croatia all took part as a way to express solidarity with Ukraine and protest the Russian invasion. The Ukrainian station Radio Promin also played the song.

The message is crystal clear: "Stop War." Those words were sprayed in yellow and blue onto a wall in Berlin's Mauerpark alongside an image of two girls hugging cheek-to-cheek. One girl has the Ukrainian flag on her face, the other one the Russian. The mural was created by the Dominican-born street artist Eme Freethnker, who lives in the German capital.

On Thursday at noon, churches and cathedrals across Germany rang their bells as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine. Cologne's Cathedral was among them, ringing its bells for a full seven minutes, one minute for each day since the war started. A few days earlier, on the Monday carnival holiday known as "Rosenmontag," some 250,000 people, including those in this picture, demonstrated against the war.

Demonstrations also took place in Berlin, and various other activist movements also took up the anti-war call. Above is a Fridays for Future demonstration that took place on Thursday in Berlin. The activists demanded an end to fossil fuels and war. Some have pointed out how dependence on Russian gas has financed Putin's regime.

Over the past week, demonstrations against war have been visible around the world, and many famous urban landmarks were lit up in yellow and blue, the colors of the Ukrainian flag. One of them was the TV tower in Frankfurt, Germany.

When German playwright Bertolt Brecht and his Berliner Ensemble, a theater company he founded in East Berlin, moved into the above premise in the 1950s, he had a stage curtain installed that bore a dove by Pablo Picasso. The bird is a sign of peace, and Brecht intended it as an anti-war sign. The Berliner Ensemble recently reinstalled the original curtain to protest the war in Ukraine.

Those words, calling for understanding, are written across the surface of a closed-off highway overpass in the western German city of Lüdenscheid. At 300 meters long, it is one of the biggest street art installations in the world. The bridge is shut due to possible collapse, so painting the words was not without risk.

Hanging from the colonnade of the Fridericianum, a museum in the city of Kassel, in the central German state of Hesse, are three panels calling to stop the war and Putin. Entitled "Anti War Drawings, 2022," they were created by Dan Perjovschi, a Romanian-born artist. More of his works will be on display during Kassel's prestigious, upcoming Documenta contemporary art exhibition.

Artist Yoko Ono installed a message for peace in London's Piccadilly Circus — but not just there. It can also be seen in Berlin, Los Angeles, Melbourne, Milan, New York City and Seoul.