Protesters in Washington, D.C., successfully projected the Ukrainian flag on the Russian Embassy on Wednesday, prompting a battle with embassy staff who used a spotlight to try to stop them.
The “cat and mouse” battle was shared on Twitter by Benjamin Wittes, one of the organizers and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and has since gone viral.
The video shows protesters projecting multiple images with the colors of Ukraine’s flag on to the walls of the embassy as the Russian Embassy’s spotlight operator tries to drown it out with a spotlight.
Wittes tweeted: “We lit up the Russian embassy in blue and yellow but the Checkists inside had a surprise for us. They are using their own spotlights to wash us out.”
He said that the the protesters eventually “defeated” the Russian spotlight operator.
He added that the event was not announced earlier in order to take the staff inside the Russian Embassy by surprise to stop their attempts to block the blue and yellow lights.
Wittes told NPR that the protest was against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the killing of Ukrainian people and that he along with another protester, Phil Ateto, set up 14 lights along with $10,000 worth of equipment.
The Russian Embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment.