Anti-war protests in Russia (2022–present)

• 1. A Warning Before Dark

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  Anti-war protests in Russia erupted on the 24th of February 2022, within hours of Russian forces crossing into Ukraine. That afternoon, Russia's Investigative Committee warned citizens they would face legal consequences for joining unsanctioned protests. The opposition activist Marina Litvinovich called for street demonstrations on Instagram that evening. Police detained her before she left her house.

  By the end of that first night, OVD-Info recorded 1,820 arrests across 58 cities. Of those, 1,002 took place in Moscow alone. Near Pushkinskaya Square, 2,000 people had gathered. Up to 1,000 came out in Saint Petersburg. Hundreds turned out in Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, and Perm.

  Russia's interior ministry justified the arrests by citing coronavirus restrictions on public events. What followed was not a single night's outburst but a sustained effort spanning months. Who risked the most? What forms did the resistance take? And how far was the government prepared to go to silence it?

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• 2. Faces in the Crowd

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  On the 1st of March, photographs circulated on social media showing primary school children behind bars. Novaya Gazeta confirmed the images. The children had been arrested for laying flowers at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow. They were also holding signs that read "No to war." A special detention center in Yekaterinburg ran out of room for prisoners from protests that same day.

  On the 2nd of March, the artist Yelena Osipova was arrested at an anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg. Born to survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, she was 77 years old. Videos of her arrest spread widely across Twitter and Reddit.

  On the 15th of March, Anastasia Parshkova stood alone before the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow. She carried a placard bearing the words "6th Commandment. Don't Kill." Police took her to the station shortly after. Art historian Maria Silina described the action as an example of détournement: the redeployment of Russian Orthodox symbols to critique the alliance between the church and military power.

  That same month, videos spread online showing people arrested for holding blank signs. One widely shared video showed a woman carrying a sign reading only "два слова" - "two words" in Russian. The Feminist Anti-War Resistance group reported that on the 8th of March, women had laid flowers at war monuments in 94 Russian and international cities.

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• 3. The Written Resistance

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  Over 150 prominent activists, authors, and academics signed an open letter at the beginning of February 2022, before any invasion began. Titled "If Only There Is No War!", it protested what the signatories called "the party of war in the Russian leadership."

  After the invasion, Russian Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov announced that Novaya Gazeta would publish its next edition in both Ukrainian and Russian. Human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov launched an online petition on the 24th of February. It gathered 289,000 signatures by the end of that first day. By the 1st of March, it had passed one million.

  A petition for Putin's impeachment appeared on Change.org on the 26th of February and gathered more than 200,000 signatures within a day. Kommersant reporter Elena Chernenko launched a separate anti-war petition signed by over 250 journalists. Another letter condemning the war was signed by over 250 scientists. A third was signed by almost 200 municipal council members in Moscow and other cities.

  1,200 students, faculty, and staff of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations signed their own open letter. The institute is affiliated with Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Their letter stated that they "consider it morally unacceptable to stay on the sidelines and keep silent when people are dying in a neighboring state."

  More than 30,000 technology workers and 6,000 medical workers signed open letters calling for the war to stop. They were joined by over 17,000 artists, more than 4,300 teachers, and 5,000 scientists. Some of those who signed petitions lost their jobs. Others were told by their employers to withdraw their signatures or face dismissal.

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• 4. When Words Became Crimes

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  On the 1st of March, Russian authorities forced the radio station Echo of Moscow off the air. The independent television channel TV Rain was shut down the same day for having broadcast opposition to the war. TV Rain ended its final program with a loop of Swan Lake. Soviet authorities had used the same footage in 1991 to obscure news of the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.

  Three days later, the Russian parliament passed a new law on the 4th of March. It punished citizens with up to 15 years in prison for spreading "fake information" about the military. The same law criminalized calls for sanctions against Russia. It also made it illegal to "discredit" the use of Russian troops, with a penalty of up to three years in prison. Putin signed both measures into law that same day. Calling the war a "war," rather than a "special military operation," could now qualify as a crime.

  Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom regulator, restricted access to Facebook and Twitter. The agency also blocked the BBC, Deutsche Welle, Voice of America, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta pulled all war-related material from its website. The editors explained that censorship had moved to the threat of criminal prosecution for anyone reporting information that differed from Ministry of Defence press releases. The Yekaterinburg-based outlet Znak.com suspended all operations.

  Over 150 journalists left Russia within three days of Putin signing the bill. Reporters Without Borders called the law "the final blow" that completed the destruction of Russia's independent media.

  In July 2022, Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Krasnoselsky district council in Moscow, was sentenced to seven years in prison. He had spoken out against the war at a council meeting in March. Lawyer Pavel Chikov said this was the first jail term handed down under the new law. In December 2022, opposition politician Ilya Yashin received the harshest sentence yet: eight years and six months in prison for statements about the killings in Bucha.

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• 5. The Cost of Speaking

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  On the 5th of March, police raided and detained hundreds of journalists, politicians, and activists. The raids came ahead of the following day's planned demonstrations. On the 6th of March, over 5,000 people were arrested in at least 60 cities, according to OVD-Info. The total number of detentions since the 24th of February reached 13,000 that same day.

  OVD-Info confirmed at least 30 cases of protesters beaten by police during the weekend of 5-the 6th of March. It also reported several cases of torture in detention, noting that "it is likely that this number is much higher." One protester arrested that weekend managed to conceal her phone during interrogation. Her recording captured 11 minutes of physical and verbal abuse. One officer told her, "You are the enemies of Russia. You are the enemies of the people."

  Human Rights Watch documented arrests in which police covered their identifying insignia. The organization also reported that several protesters were subjected to waterboarding. Mediazona reported that women in custody faced threats of sexual violence, and that some detainees were sprayed in the face with antiseptic solutions.

  Film critic Anton Dolin was among the anti-war activists who returned home to find the letter Z graffitied on their walls. He described it as a direct threat: "We know where your family lives, beware." Manure had also been left at the doors of others. Russian authorities actively encouraged citizens to report friends, colleagues, and family members for expressing opposition to the war.

  After six months of protests, OVD-Info counted around 16,500 people detained across Russia. At least 224 faced criminal prosecution. More than 300,000 Russians fled the country during this period. Bolshoi Theater ballerina Olga Smirnova left Russia to continue her career in the Netherlands, in protest against the war. By early April, an estimated 100,000 Russians had already fled to Georgia alone.

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• 6. Public Voices and Symbols

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  On the 14th of March, Marina Ovsyannikova walked onto the set of Channel One Russia's main news program Vremya during a live broadcast. She held up a sign reading "NO WAR. Stop the war. Do not believe the propaganda, here you are being lied to. Russians against war." The daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, Ovsyannikova had pre-recorded a video expressing shame at having helped spread "Kremlin propaganda" at Channel One. Police detained her that same evening and later released her.

  Pop star Valery Meladze and television host Ivan Urgant had both criticized the invasion on social media on the 24th of February. Tennis world number one Daniil Medvedev spoke out for peace that same day. World number seven Andrey Rublev wrote "No war please" on a camera lens after winning a match the next day. Hip-hop artist Oxxxymiron cancelled upcoming shows and called the invasion "a crime and a catastrophe." Theater director Yelena Kovalskaya resigned from the state-owned Meyerhold Theater Center, writing that it was "impossible to work for a murderer and receive salary from him."

  Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet head of state, called for everything possible to be done "to stop the threat of a nuclear war." Former Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich, who served from 2012 to 2018, said that "wars are the worst things one might face in life." Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader imprisoned in January 2021, described Putin as an "obviously insane tsar." He called on Russians to gather in their city's main square every weekday at 19:00.

  Anti-war protesters adopted the white-blue-white flag, created by removing the red stripe from the Russian tricolor. Protesters said the red represented blood and violence. The flag was designed to evoke the legacy of the historic Novgorod Republic as an example of Russian democracy.

  On the 9th of September, seven members of Smolninsky District Council in Saint Petersburg passed a resolution. It called on the State Duma to impeach Putin for "high treason" over his handling of the war. The council listed the decimation of young Russian men, the country's economic downturn, and NATO's expansion eastward among the consequences. Those seven council members were subsequently arrested. On the 21st of September, after Putin announced a partial military mobilization, the movement Vesna called for country-wide demonstrations. Women in Yakutsk gathered that week and performed a traditional round dance under the slogans "We will not give up our husbands" and "No to war." In Endirey and in the Dagestani capital Makhachkala, police fired live rounds into the air to disperse anti-mobilization rallies. As of December 2023, polling showed support for the war among Russians had reached an all-time low.

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