Picking your battles. Novaya Europe analysed almost 40,000 protests to see how Russia’s war in Ukraine has changed civil society

A man being detained at an anti-war protest in Moscow, on 13 March 2022. Photo: Novaya Gazeta Europe

Why don’t Russians protest? Politicians, political scientists and sociologists have all asked the question since the war began. But while the Kremlin has a well-oiled repressive machine in place for dealing with anti-war feeling in the country, there are still frequent instances of civic action — from miners’ strikes to animal rights rallies.

The desire to protest, even if not overtly against Vladimir Putin’s regime, has fallen sharply in recent years according to a May poll by Russia’s independent Levada Centre, with only 13% of Russians willing to act, compared to 27% in May 2019.

There are now over 1,500 political prisoners and Russians are unwilling to take to the streets amid the Kremlin’s military censorship, introduced shortly after the full-scale invasion, and a violent crackdown on street protests. The security forces suppressed large protests in 2022, and a Russian “slave mentality” trope gained popularity online. Nonetheless, Novaya Gazeta Europe counted over 38,000 protests within Russia from 2022 to March 2025.

What Russians protest about

There are, on average, 30 protests a day in Russia. People write complaints, collect signatures, record video messages for the authorities, go on strike or take to the streets.

Only one in five protests in 2024 were street protests. But in February 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine and street protests broke out across the country, the authorities immediately made it clear that any anti-war protests would be brutally put down. In the last three years, security forces have detained almost 20,000 people participating in street protests, according to human rights group OVD-Info.

Despite the crackdown from the authorities, protests swept the country again six months later when Vladimir Putin announced mobilisation, with security forces detaining 2,457 people between 21 September 2022 and 10 October 2022, according to OVD-Info.

Although those were the last mass protests, civic activity has continued. People are less likely to oppose the regime, but might still protest local issues, such as deforestation or public transport issues.

Despite the risks, residents of Russia have held almost 40,000 protests over the past three years. We have analysed them by category.

Even official data shows that almost half of the country’s utility networks are in a poor state of repair. Last winter, several regions suffered major system breakdowns. The Moscow region saw some residents left without heating in temperatures of -20°C. They filed petitions, sent video messages to Putin and staged pickets.

Residents of Dagestan, in the North Caucasus, where electricity and water are regularly cut off, went even further: in 2023, they blocked roads 10 times and rallied multiple times in the summer of 2024 in temperatures that sometimes got up to 37°.

One of the main environmental causes is the fight to protect Lake Baikal. The forests around the lake have been felled to build railway tracks for years. Fearing for their fate, local scientists turned to the State Duma, while activists launched a petition. It didn’t work. In 2024, parliament extended the logging licence.

In summer 2023, there were multiple rallies in Ulyanovsk, and Perm residents took to the streets for a second time in March 2025. Both groups are reluctant to see historical buildings make way for offices and high-rise buildings.

One of the longest-running protests in Russia began in 2015 with truckers struggling to make payments via the Platon electronic toll collection system. Truck drivers are still protesting.

Affordable schools and kindergartens are a priority for parents nationwide. They collect signatures for new schools, picket for free children’s art school places and petition governors to keep village schools open.

Alisa, a four-year-old with spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), was buried in St. Petersburg on 13 May. Her overseas brand medication Spinraza had been substituted with a clinically untested Russian generic, Lantesens.

Parents across Russia have to fight the Health Ministry for Spinraza, with pickets reported in Irkutsk, Yekaterinburg, Barnaul and Belgorod. A parent in the Altai region even went on hunger strike in November 2022.

About 80% of waste rots in landfills in Russia. Almost every region has at least one problem landfill. Last year saw at least 15 anti-landfill rallies.

Nizhny Novgorod trolleybuses stopped running on 1 March. Prior to that, residents appealed to Russian chief investigator Alexander Bastrykin six times to safeguard public transport and complained to the governor about overcrowding on buses. Lack of timetabling, outdated vehicles and route cancellations concern Russians almost as much as the state of the roads.

Employees at Wildberries, the country’s largest online retailer, went on strike in March 2023. Pick-up points were closed across the country until the company cancelled fines for the return of defective goods, the protesters’ main demand.

Besides nationwide strikes, such as those by couriers and taxi drivers, there were also local demands made by ambulance crews, bus drivers, builders, factory workers and other employees. Over 360 strikes swept the country in the last three years.

Close to 1,000 people turned out in Moscow, while hundreds more rallied in Izhevsk and Irkutsk, opposing a bill submitted to the State Duma that proposed to legalise the killing of stray animals.

Animal rights activists have long fought for the humane treatment of stray dogs, regularly organising petitions and rallies throughout the country.

There are also dissenters among those who support the regime and the war. Activists from the ultra-patriotic National Liberation Movement frequently take to the streets: they demand the restoration of the USSR, the abolition of Ukraine, that Putin be given emergency powers and missiles be aimed at the US.

Local non-political protests remain an outlet for activists and experts believe it would be too much work for the state to quash them.

Demands to reduce utility costs, repair heating or save a park from development are not the same as open protests against the regime, but should still be taken seriously, Schulmann believes.

“People look down on those participating in local protests, calling their resistance fake or supplicant,” she adds. “But organising a protest is a skill. Autocracies do whatever they can to blunt that skill in people. And those who can burnish that skill will have a head start in future.”

HOW WE CALCULATED

We consider any action that aims to raise awareness of a problem, express disagreement or bring about change a protest: rallies, pickets, appeals to the authorities, petitions, strikes, meeting the authorities, hunger strikes, arson attacks on administrative buildings, and handing out leaflets.

We used the most popular social media platforms in Russia — VK and Telegram — as data sources. We downloaded 2,572 news channels from across Russia from the TGStat Telegram channel catalogue, including channels which monitor protests, such as activatica and zabastcom. Using Telegram API, we downloaded all posts from those channels from 2022 to March 2025 and filtered them by keywords such as “protest” or “rally”.

What’s on people’s minds in the Russian regions?

Russia is a large country with a different political culture beyond the largest cities. The willingness to protest depends largely on local officials. For example, in occupied Crimea, a network of pro-Russian activists monitors anti-war publications and reports their authors, OVD-Info told Novaya Europe. Unsurprisingly, the region is top of the charts when it comes to cases for “discrediting” the army.

“It’s not just the repression level that varies from region to region. The local identity does too,” says sociologist Tatyana Golova. “Novosibirsk has a strong sense of being a free city. And no matter the oppression, when people believe the myth, they are willing to protest.”

The level of repression, political culture and issues concerning local residents vary from region to region.

Moscow sees the largest political rallies, both by people opposed to and in support of the regime. At the largest such demonstration, on 24 February 2022, security forces detained over 1,000 protesters.

But while the authorities in Moscow may come down hard on any protest, beyond the Urals you can still come out on the streets against corruption. Activists from the local organisation Power in Motion do so on an almost weekly basis.

Novosibirsk, thousands of kilometres from Moscow, is another freedom-loving city. The city has hosted rallies both in defence of traditional values and against blocking YouTube.

In the Kemerovo region, however, locals don’t make political demands and rarely take to the streets. But workers protest routinely: local miners have been on strike since the fall of 2024, while paramedics went on strike in 2023. Ambulance drivers in the city of Novokuznetsk went on strike and refused to do overtime until their salaries were raised. In 2023, they were earning 27,000 rubles (€300) a month.

Moscow may be known for political protests, but the Moscow region is known for protests about everyday problems like utilities. In March, one such protest was even lent support by servicemen from the city of Pushkino who addressed Putin to complain of sewage being discharged into the River Ucha. In the nearby city of Dmitrov, residents also appealed to Putin as the sewage system in the city was close to collapse.

St. Petersburg’s beautiful historic centre has given rise to an active urban preservation movement, with activists saving houses from demolition and trying to have them restored to their former glory. In October, a flash mob sought to defend buildings’ original appearance. Their message: “No to window genocide!”

In some regions, it is more dangerous to pick a fight with the authorities than others, and annexed Crimea is one of those. OVD-Info says it is one of the most repressive parts of Russian-ruled territory alongside Moscow, St. Petersburg and the republics of Tatarstan and Bashkortostan.

Petitions and appeals to the authorities are a safe alternative to street protests.

“Although petitions aren’t direct action, they are currently the most readily available tool of pressure,” a former local councillor and teacher explains. “Of course, people would make a greater statement if they came out onto the streets. But that’s fairly unrealistic now.”

One expert calls this “petitioning the tsar”. People complaining to the authorities means they recognise their legitimacy. A member of PS Lab, an autonomous research group focusing on politics and society in Russia and post-Soviet regions, says that in autocracies, appeals and petitions remain one of the few legal and relatively safe ways for people to fight for their rights.

‘Ultra-patriots’ and communists

Before the war, Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) was the main instigator of protests in the country. The movement unleashed the largest protest of the 2010s. In January 2021, Russia declared the foundation extremist, meaning it was banned from taking part in elections or protests, and three years later Navalny died in a penal colony in the Arctic Circle.

Mainstream political forces cannot now criticise Putin or the war, though parties such as the Communist Party and the Liberal Democratic Party can still speak out on local problems such as housing, utilities, education, healthcare and urban planning.

Ultra-patriotic sentiments are also much more noticeable in the regions. They form 6% of all protests. Their main mouthpiece is the National Liberation Movement (NLM), whose members petition for “emergency powers for Putin” or to “annul Gorbachev’s decisions”. They protest in support of the war and against “foreign agents”. They hand out their newspaper The National Course and call for nuclear weapons to be aimed at the US. In some cities, such as Irkutsk, NLM activists protest every week and are never detained.

But the vast majority of protests are organised and carried out by local people. Over the past three years, political parties and other movements have only organised 15% of protests.

Despite the weakness of Russian civil society, many non-political protests still succeed, even in wartime. Their resistance and local successes mean the regime has not yet completely depoliticised society. Collective action can never totally be stamped out, experts told Novaya Europe.

“Soviet society looked hopeless by the mid-1980s in the opinion of one sociologist. It was extremely demoralised, cynical, passive, atomised and drunk,” says Schulmann. “No one living at that time had ever witnessed an election offering an alternative choice. That said, as soon as the opportunity arose, in the first competitive elections to the Supreme Soviet in 1989, people actively got organised, demonstrated, campaigned, put themselves forward and voted. You cannot quell people’s political instincts. Those who can hang on until the next window of opportunity presents itself by maintaining contacts and organisational skills will be at a great advantage.”

With Alisa Gainsbourg, Artyom Kostylev and Masha Matveyeva

Daria Talanova

Data correspondent