Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia

• 1. Introduction

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  Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia takes many forms, but nearly all of them share one common risk: prison, exile, or worse. According to the Levada Center, a Russian NGO, only about 15% of the Russian population disapproved of Putin at the beginning of 2023. That number, small as it sounds, represents millions of people who have chosen to resist in a country where resistance carries an ever-growing price. Some march in city squares. Some organize flash mobs on Red Square with white ribbons. Some sign open letters and lose their jobs the following week. And some, like Alexei Navalny, die in Arctic prison colonies under circumstances the world struggles to explain away. Who are these people? What do they want? How do they hold together across a landscape of suppression? And what happens when the most prominent voice among them is silenced forever?

• 2. A Movement Divided

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  Russia's opposition is not a single movement. It splits sharply between two categories that operate in entirely different worlds. The parliamentary opposition, which includes parties like the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and A Just Russia, holds seats in the State Duma but is widely seen as loyal to the Kremlin in practice. Chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov went further, saying there are no real elections in Putin's Russia and that participating in what is called an election only legitimizes the regime. The genuine opposition, known as the non-systemic opposition, includes parties like Yabloko and the People's Freedom Party, as well as organizations that have come and gone over the years. The Russian Opposition Coordination Council was active from 2012 to 2013. The Other Russia operated from 2006 to 2011. Supporters of these groups span a wide political range: liberals, communists, socialists, anarchists, and Russian nationalists have all found reasons to oppose Putin's government. What holds them together, when they hold together at all, is opposition to corruption and to Putin himself. The lack of unity, opposition figures acknowledge, has consistently weakened their position.

• 3. Years in the Streets

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  The earliest organized dissent came in March and April of 2001, when protesters rallied against the takeover of the independent television channel NTV by Putin-aligned Gazprom. State Duma members Boris Nemtsov and Grigory Yavlinsky stood with protesters and demanded the government preserve independent ownership of the channel. Their demands were not met. From 2006 onward, the Dissenters' March brought a broad coalition into the streets across Russian cities. The umbrella group behind it, The Other Russia, included the National Bolshevik Party under Eduard Limonov and liberals including Garry Kasparov as leader of the United Civil Front. Starting on the 31st of July 2009, another campaign called Strategy-31 held protests on Triumfalnaya Square in Moscow on the 31st of every month with 31 days, defending Article 31 of the Russian Constitution's guarantee of peaceful assembly. Writer Eduard Limonov and human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva led those demonstrations. Then, starting from the 5th of December 2011, the day after State Duma elections that protesters claimed were rigged, a wave of rallies swept across the country that some publications called a "snow revolution." On the 6th of May 2012, a march approaching Bolotnaya Square was dispersed by police. Seventeen people were charged with violence against officers; twelve went to jail. Human rights defenders declared the detainees innocent and said the police bore responsibility for the clashes. By 2014, following Russia's military intervention in Ukraine and the Crimean crisis, Reuters reported 30,000 people participated in the March of Peace in Moscow on the 15th of March, the largest protests in Russia since 2011.

• 4. Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Fight

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  Alexei Navalny rose to lead the non-systemic opposition through a relentless focus on government corruption. His Anti-Corruption Foundation produced a series of video reports targeting the Putin government, including "Putin Must Go" in 2010 and "Putin. Corruption" in 2011. Video versions of these reports were watched about 10 million times on the internet. On the 26th of March 2017, protests against alleged corruption broke out simultaneously in cities across Russia after Navalny's foundation released a film called "He Is Not Dimon to You," targeting Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. A Levada poll from April 2017 found that 45% of surveyed Russians supported Medvedev's resignation. A May 2017 Levada poll found that 58% of surveyed Russians supported the protests. On the 20th of August 2020, Navalny was poisoned with Novichok. He was evacuated to the Charite hospital in Berlin, where the poison was identified. An investigation published just before his return to Russia in January 2021, accusing Putin of corruption, garnered 70 million views in a few days. After he was detained and then jailed following his return on the 17th of January 2021, mass protests broke out across Russia on the 23rd of January. Following his jailing, a "hardening of the course" was observed from the government, with opposition figures facing a choice between exile and prison. Among those who left Russia were politicians Lyubov Sobol, Dmitry Gudkov, and Ivan Zhdanov, and journalists Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan. Navalny himself had been barred from running in the 2018 presidential election on what is widely regarded as political grounds.

• 5. The 2022 Crackdown

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  On the 4th of March 2022, Putin signed a law introducing prison sentences of up to 15 years for spreading what the government called "fake news" about its military operation in Ukraine. Thousands of Russians were prosecuted under this law, including opposition politician Ilya Yashin and artist Aleksandra Skochilenko. In July 2022, Alexei Gorinov, a member of the Krasnoselsky district council in Moscow, became the first person sentenced to jail time under the new censorship laws, receiving seven years after making anti-war comments at a council meeting in March. As of June 2023, according to Amnesty International, up to 20,000 Russian citizens had faced heavy reprisals for opposing the war. From the 24th of February to the 13th of March 2022, at least 14,906 people were detained, including what OVD-Info described as the largest single-day mass arrests in post-Soviet Russian history on the 6th of March. In February 2022, more than 30,000 technology workers, 6,000 medical workers, more than 17,000 artists, 5,000 scientists, and thousands of others signed open letters calling on Putin's government to stop the war. Some who signed lost their jobs. Levada Center polls from 2022 indicated that at least 30 million pro-European Russians opposed the war in Ukraine, but literary critic Galina Yuzefovich described leaving Russia as a "privilege" for those who could afford it. In October 2023, Vyacheslav Volodin, Speaker of the State Duma, said that Russians who sided with what he called the "Kyiv regime" should be sent to the Magadan region and forced to work in its mines, a region associated with Stalin-era Gulag camps.

• 6. Death and Defiance

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  On the 16th of February 2024, Alexei Navalny died in a prison colony in the Arctic Circle, aged 47. Russians began bringing flowers to monuments to victims of political repression in cities across the country. Hundreds of people were detained in more than 30 Russian cities simply for attending makeshift memorials to him. Authorities refused to release Navalny's body to his family for over a week after his death. His wife stated that the delay was to allow traces of intentional Novichok poisoning to disappear. His mother was sent to a morgue where his body had never been taken and was reportedly threatened with a secret burial unless she agreed within three hours. She refused to negotiate. More than 50,000 Russians sent requests to the Russian government demanding the return of his body. When the body was finally returned eight days later, thousands defied likely repression to attend his funeral in Moscow, chanting his name, "no to war," and "Russia will be free." An additional 250,000 people watched a livestream of the funeral provided by his team, despite apparent attempts by authorities to interrupt internet coverage. Boris Nadezhdin and Yekaterina Duntsova, both barred from the presidential election, attended the funeral. Nadezhdin said: "We have come to say goodbye to a person who was a symbol of an era. There is still hope that everything will be all right and Russia will be free and peaceful as Alexei had dreamed." US President Joe Biden commented that "there is no doubt that the death of Mr Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did." Emmanuel Macron expressed "anger and indignation," adding that "in today's Russia, free spirits are put in the gulag and sentenced to death."

• 7. Resistance Without a Leader

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  After Navalny's death, his wife Yulia Navalnaya told Russians to "stand beside me" and "share the fury and hate for those who dared to kill our future." She appeared before the European Parliament on the 28th of February 2024 and received a standing ovation. She argued that defeating Putin requires innovation beyond sanctions and resolutions, and in March she reiterated Navalny's call for Russians to gather at polling stations at midday on the 17th of March to form long queues in a protest that could not easily be criminalized. The opposition now operates without a defined leadership structure inside Russia. Exiled groups have adapted by emphasizing anti-corruption and pro-democracy messaging through platforms like Telegram and YouTube. On the 23rd of June 2023, a different kind of challenge to Putin's authority had already emerged when forces loyal to Yevgeny Prigozhin's Wagner Group mutinied, seized Rostov-on-Don, and advanced toward Moscow before turning back. There were no sizeable spontaneous displays of public support for Putin during that rebellion. Russia analyst Anna Matveeva noted the contrast with Turkey's 2016 coup attempt, when Turkish citizens actively took to the streets in opposition to the coup. Meanwhile, armed partisan groups have emerged inside Russia since the 2022 invasion, including the Combat Organization of Anarcho-Communists, described by The Insider as "the most active 'subversive' force" within Russia since the war began. Putin's approval rating among Russians aged 18-24 stood at just 20% in December 2020, according to Levada Center, suggesting the generational divide in attitudes toward his rule may be the longest-running pressure point of all.