Up to 50 protesters on Saturday stood in a circle and held a yellow ribbon as they looked into the centre where the four simulated corpses were surrounded by 10 posters describing horrors wrought across Ukraine by the Russian invasion.
Protest organiser and Ukrainian expatriate Olha Viazenko, of Dunedin, said the seventh Dunedin protest since the war began came on the day that news emerged about a Russian attack on a railway station in Kramatorsk, in the eastern region of Donetsk, where civilians were trying to evacuate to safer parts of the country.
At least 50 people, included women and children, were killed, she said.
And there was death and destruction apparent now in cities across the country’s northern regions.
As Russian troops withdrew from northern Ukraine, Ukrainian troops were moving in, and images and stories were revealing the "massacre" left behind, Mrs Viazenko said.
"They saw awful things. They (Russian soldiers) tortured civilians, they raped women, they raped children, they killed them.
"They tortured dogs and other animals.
"The world cannot just be blind — if it’s hard to see that, we need to show it," she said.
In February, when the invasion began, protesters gathered while in a state of shock.
The people who continued to protest the war had now processed their emotions, but the war was still no easier to understand, she said.
"It doesn’t get easier for Ukrainians.
"I speak with a lot of Ukrainians all over New Zealand and in Ukraine as well.
"They have waves (of emotion), and each day those waves are harder and harder and harder.
"It’s hard to understand.
"It’s hard to live with all of that. When our relatives die, and when our friends die, and every day the news is really, really awful."
At the weekend, Reuters reported Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy called the strike in Kramatorsk a deliberate attack on civilians.
Ukrainian officials expected an attempt by Russian forces to gain full control of Donetsk and neighbouring Luhansk, both partly held by Moscow-backed separatists since 2014, the international news agency said.
The Kremlin said the Russian "special operation" could end in the "foreseeable future", with its aims being achieved through work by the Russian military and peace negotiators, it said.
Mrs Viazenko thought otherwise.
"I’m not sure that this war will be finished soon," she said.
