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- A 73-year-old Norwegian man woke Russian diplomats with an 'air raid siren' late on Friday.
- His noisy protest in Oslo came on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
- He wanted Russians to wake up to the war, he told Norwegian outlet Nettavisen.
A 73-year-old in Oslo gave Russian diplomats a rude awakening by blasting a siren outside their bedroom windows on the anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to a local report.
On Friday night at around 2.30 a.m. local time, Kjetil Krane carried a loudspeaker out to an apartment block known to house workers at Oslo's Russian embassy, Nettavisen reported.
Standing in the freezing cold, Krane played the sound of a Japanese foghorn, which bears a striking resemblance to an air-raid siren, according to the outlet. Over the past year Ukrainian civilians have had to shelter in fear during Russian air raids, which frequently strike residential areas as well as military targets.
In a video shared by Nettavisen, Krane can be seen wearing a T-shirt that says "wake a Russian" in Norwegian as a newly-awoken resident peers out of a window.
Krane told the outlet that he wanted the diplomats to wake up over the issue of the war, both literally and figuratively. In a poster he distributed around the neighborhood ahead of time, and pictured by Nettavisen, he gave advance warning and reassurance about his actions.
He said he was prepared to be arrested, adding that the act may be illegal but he did not think it was immoral.
Police were called out and patrolled the area, but only after Krane had left, according to Nettavisen.
Krane's act of defiance is just one among a flurry of trollish steps taken at Russian diplomatic outposts worldwide since the 2022 invasion.
On Friday, German art activists Enno Lenze and Wieland Giebel dumped a wrecked Russian tank outside the country's embassy in Berlin, after months of legal efforts to get permission to do so from local authorities.
In London last week, activist group Led By Donkeys poured blue and yellow paint along the road outside the Russian embassy, ensuring that cars driving by would "paint" the road with the colors of Ukraine's flag.
And in October last year, two Finnish men, Jarno Virtala and Markus Mattsson, painted over a diplomatic parking spot in the same colors outside the home of a Russian envoy, calling the act an "annexation" of the "territory" of the parking space for Ukraine.
Several streets housing Russian embassies around the world have also been renamed in Ukraine's honor.