Following the Russo-Ukrainian war on 24 February 2022, anti-war demonstrations and protests broke out across Russia. As well as the demonstrations, a number of petitions and open letters have been penned in opposition to the war, and a number of public figures, both cultural and political, have released statements against the war.
The protests have been met with widespread repression by the Russian authorities. According to OVD-Info, at least 14,906 people were detained from 24 February to 13 March 2022. Human rights organisations and reporters have raised concerns of police brutality during arrests and OVD-Info reported several cases of protesters being tortured under detention. The government has also moved to crackdown on other forms of opposition to the war, including introducing widespread censorship measures. Other individuals who signed anti-war petitions have faced reprisals. After Russian president Vladimir Putin announced a partial mobilization of Russia's military reserves on 21 September, over 2,000 people were detained in mass street protests in the following days.
Street protests
February
On the afternoon of the invasion, the Investigative Committee of Russia issued a warning to Russians that they would face legal repercussions for joining unsanctioned protests related to "the tense foreign political situation". The opposition activist Marina Litvinovich called on Instagram for street protests on the evening of 24 February but was detained by police as she left her house. That evening, thousands took to the streets in cities across Russia to protest the war. The largest demonstrations were in Moscow, where 2,000 protesters gathered near Pushkinskaya Square, and Saint Petersburg, where up to 1,000 protesters gathered. Hundreds demonstrated in Yekaterinburg, and there were also demonstrations in Chelyabinsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk and Perm, including other cities. By the end of the evening of the day of the invasion, according to the OVD-Info monitor, there had been 1,820 arrests in 58 cities, of which 1,002 were carried out in Moscow. Russia's interior ministry justified these arrests with "coronavirus restrictions, including on public events".
On the following day, 25 February, further protests had continued in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and other cities. In Saint Petersburg several hundred people gathered in the city center, chanting "No to war!" OVD-Info reported 437 detentions in 26 Russian cities on that day, including 226 in Moscow and 130 in Saint Petersburg.
On 26 February, some Russian protesters chose to reduce the chances of arrest by staging single-person protests in Moscow and other city squares. Others gathered in small groups to move more nimbly around the streets. In Yekaterinburg, hundreds gathered, shouting "No to war!". Throughout the day at least 469 people were arrested in 34 cities, of which around half in Moscow, bringing the total number of arrests to over 3,000.
Protests continued on 27 February. The protests coincided with the seventh anniversary of the murder of the opposition politician Boris Nemtsov, and arrests took place at an improvised memorial outside the Kremlin where Nemtsov was shot. Around 1,000 people gathered for a spontaneous anti-war rally near Great Gostiny Dvor in Saint Petersburg. According to OVD-Info, by early Sunday evening, police had detained at least 900 Russians in 44 cities, bringing the total number of arrests to over 4,000 since the war had begun. By the end of the day, that number had grown to around 2,710 arrests (at least 5,844 in total since the beginning of the war), including at least 1,269 arrests in Moscow and 1,034 in Saint Petersburg. Members of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the People's Freedom Party, and Yabloko, spoke out against the invasion. On the same day, a van with markings that read "People, wake up!", "This is war", "Putin is scum!" in Russian crashed and caught fire in Pushkinskaya Square.
March
On 1 March, reports and photographs appeared in social media, also republished and confirmed by Novaya Gazeta, showing primary school children behind bars, arrested by police in Moscow for laying flowers at the Ukrainian embassy and holding signs saying the repeated "No to war". A special detention center set up in Yekaterinburg ran out of room for prisoners arrested from protests.
On 2 March, the artist Yelena Osipova, aged 77 and born to survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, was among those arrested at an anti-war protest in Saint Petersburg. Videos of her arrest were widely shared on social media platforms Twitter and Reddit. Police action against the protesters continued on the following day.
On 4 March, the activist Yulia Galyamina was detained and held in custody pending trial, charged with violating the law on public events by trying to organise an anti-war protest.
On 5 March, ahead of protests planned for 6 March, police raided, searched and detained hundreds of Russian journalists, politicians and activists.
On 6 March, there were protests in at least 60 cities, including Vladivostok, Irkutsk and Khabarovsk. OVD-Info reported over 5,000 arrests throughout the day. The Russian interior ministry reported over 3,500 detentions. A video showing Kemerovo Oblast governor Sergey Tsivilyov attempting to justify the invasion to protesters that day went viral. The total number of arrests reached 13,000 overall on 6 March.
On 8 March, International Women's Day, the Feminist Anti-War Resistance group reported that women laid flowers at war monuments across 94 Russian and international cities, including Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Vladivostok, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kanash, Yaroslavl, Syktyvkar, Smolensk, Luga, Lytkarino, Izhevsk, Volgograd, Irkutsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Omsk, Mytishchi, Gelendzhik, Perm, Kazan, Zelenograd, Balashov, Saratov, Biysk, Khimki, Chelyabinsk, Krasnodar, Novovoronezh, Vologda, Korolev, Troitsk, Serpukhov, Vladimir, Revda, Tolyatti, Kaliningrad, Naberezhnye Chelny, Volgodonsk, Ramenskoye, Samara, Leninavan farm, Stavropol, Arkhangelsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Krasnogorsk, Novokuibyshevsk, Zheleznovodsk, Murom, Snegiri, Nakhabino, Rostov-on-Don, Cheboksary, Saransk, Dzerzhinsky, Veliky Novgorod, Tyumen, Tobolsk, Podolsk, Tula, Grebnevo village, Dolgoprudny, Murino, Vladikavkaz and Alagir. Police ordered the women laying flowers at the Gostiny Dvor in Saint Petersburg to disperse, and made over five arrests. In Moscow the Alexander Garden was closed to block access to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, so flowers were left nearby. 11 girls were detained in Moscow's Manezhnaya Square. At least 93 people, at least 60 of them in Moscow, were detained.
On 15 March, Anastasia Parshkova was arrested for standing alone before the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow with a placard bearing the words "6th Commandment. Don't Kill". She was taken to the police station, according to the Avtozak Live telegram channel.
The art historian Maria Silina has characterized Parshkova's action – redeploying symbols of the Russian Orthodox Church to critique the alliance between Orthodox religion and military ideology – as an example of détournement typical of contemporary feminist art activism in Russia.
In the week following International Women's Day, several videos went viral on social media showing Russian police arresting protesters for simply holding up a blank sign. Another arrest which went viral was that of a woman arrested for holding up a small sign that simply read "два слова" ("two words" in Russian).
By the end of March, mass protests were reported to have largely subsided due to repression from the authorities. Some smaller individual acts of opposition against the war continued.
April–June
In Sochi, Diana Isakova and other activists prepared flyers with QR codes that led to an online text "Time to change!" written by Isakova, criticising Putin as a dictator and calling for citizens to organise and carry out nonviolent resistance against the Putin government. On 17 April, Isakova and her colleagues distributed the flyers. Isakova was later arrested but was not prosecuted.
The audience staged an anti-war protest at the concert of the Russian group Kis-Kis in Saint Petersburg in May.
Unconfirmed reports circulated about a protest planned for 12 June, Russia Day, which eventually did not take place. Instead, authorities in Moscow detained 50 people, using facial recognition software.
September
On 21 September, the Vesna movement called for country-wide demonstrations in response to Putin's announcement of partial mobilization of Russia's military reserves, following setbacks for the Russian military during the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kharkiv Oblast. Multiple small-scale protests followed in several cities, including Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk and Tomsk. More than 1,311 protesters in 38 cities had been detained by the end of the day, according to OVD-Info.
On 24 September, anti-mobilization rallies organized by Vesna took place in many cities. The rallies were marked by mass detentions not only of protesters, but also of ordinary passers-by. According to OVD-Info, more than 750 people were detained by 22:30 Moscow time.
On 25 September, the women of Yakutsk went to a rally under the slogans "We will not give up our husbands", "No to genocide", "No to war". People gathered in Uosohhai, a traditional round dance symbolising the blessing of mothers for the safe return of their husbands and sons. The women were soon dispersed by the security forces. On the same day, residents of Endirey, Khasavyurtovsky District of Dagestan, took part in a rally against mobilization. The police fired live rounds into the air in an attempt to disperse the rally.
In the evening of 25 September, a rally was held in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan. At the rally, protesters clashed with the police, who in turn opened fire into the air. By the end of the day, the protest was dispersed by Rosgvardia troops.
Other direct action
As well as protests, activists have also posted anti-war stickers around neighbourhoods, have written anti-war messages on banknotes, and have hung posters that mimic official missing person posters, but that instead contain information about Russian soldiers that have been killed in the invasion. The artist Alexandra Skochilenko was arrested for allegedly replacing supermarket labels with messages protesting the Mariupol theatre airstrike, and jailed for eight weeks pending trial under the Russian fake news laws.
In Voronezh and Lukhovitsy, cases of arson of military enlistment offices and police departments in Krasnoyarsk and Smolensk were recorded. Molotov cocktails were used in all of them. As of beginning-June, at least 15 cases of arson directed at military recruitment centres had been recorded. On 24 March, a video was released on TikTok showing a protester throwing Molotov cocktails at the Moscow Kremlin walls. On 28 March, Moscow student Anastasia Levashova was sentenced to two years in prison for having thrown a Molotov cocktail at police during an anti-war rally.
At least four teachers have been arrested after criticising the invasion in their classrooms. On 3 March, the Russian Ministry of Education instructed teachers to hold lessons telling students "why the liberation mission in Ukraine is a necessity." On 20 March, six women blocked traffic on a bridge in Zelenchukskaya demanding information about their relatives who had been sent to fight in Ukraine. All six were arrested.
On 14 March, Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at Channel One Russia, disrupted the set of the channel's main news program Vremya during prime time by holding up a sign with an anti-war message. The sign read: "NO WAR. Stop the war. Do not believe the propaganda, here you are being lied to. Russians against war". Ovsyannikova, the daughter of a Ukrainian father and a Russian mother, also released a pre-recorded video at OVD-Info in which she expressed shame for her part in spreading "Kremlin propaganda" at Channel One. She was detained by police later that evening and was released, according to TASS. Ovsyannikova was detained and later released again on 17 July after staging a lone protest at the Sophia Embankment, in front of the Kremlin, two days prior.
Others have taken to attempt to remove symbols of pro-Russian actions, such as the letter Z. A man, who later fled to Armenia, reportedly stopped a car with the letter Z on its windscreen with a shovel and ordered the car's inhabitants to rip it off.
On 26 September, a gunman opened fire at a draft office in Irkutsk Oblast, injuring one senior official.
On 8 May 2023, the Yav Art Group presented an installation titled "Russian Cyberpunk", where prostheses painted with Gzhel patterns were attached to human silhouettes. The project was swiftly dismantled by authorities after its installation.