Feminist Anti-War Resistance Documents Increasing Repression of Women in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – The Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement has been releasing annual reports on the impact of Putin’s war in Ukraine on the lives of Russian women at home. It has just released the latest for 2026, and its contents have been reported by the Important Stories portal, which also talked to some of the report’s compilers who spoke on condition of anonymity.

            Among the report’s key findings (istories.media/stories/2026/05/25/kak-izmenilos-polozhenie-zhenshchin-v-rossii-vo-vremya-voini/), all of which confirm the increasingly negative situation Russian women currently find themselves in because of Putin’s war are the following:

·       The Russian authorities, working closely with the Russian Orthodox Church and nationalist groups like the Russian Community, are making it ever more difficult to get an abortion in many parts of the country and sparking a rise in abortion tourism for those who can afford it.

·       New school textbooks and programs have eliminated discussions of the possible futures of Russian women to only two things: the mother of children and patriots who join the military to defend their country. All other careers are now discussed as if they are for men only.

·       The disproportionate rates of mobilization and mortality in Russia’s ethnic republics and remote regions are forcing women in those places to “shoulder tasks that in traditional communities are historically considered men’s work.

·       The influence of informal associations like the Russian Community are “on the rise across the country. As a result, these groups have effectively taken on the functions of ‘a morality police and migration control bodies.” As a result, ethnically motivated attacks against women” have continued to rise.

·       “More than a thousand women have become victims of violent crimes committed by military personnel” over the last year. Often the perpetrators face no punishment and instead of going to prison return to the war zone.

·       And “over the course of 2025, the volume of calls regarding domestic violence to the All-Russian Helpline for Women surged by 40 percent,” and in more than 60 percent of cases where domestic violence actually reaches the courts, the perpetrator receive only minimal penalties such as a five of 5000 rubles (75 US dollars).”

All this means that the violence veterans and soldiers are committing now will continue and lead to an increasing spiral of attacks against Russian women in the future, this year’s FAR report says.