In Russia, an antiwar movement is taking shape

Not only do some polls suggest that a majority of Russians want the Kremlin to end the Ukraine conflict, but a vocal, grass-roots opposition to the war is also taking shape — and is throwing a monkey wrench into Putin’s plans to use his reelection as an affirmation of national backing for his military agenda.

The most prominent face of the movement is Boris Nadezhdin, an antiwar candidate looking to qualify for the upcoming March presidential elections. But even before Nadezhdin appeared on the scene, the movement “The Way Home” (“Put Domoy” in Russian), organized by the wives and mothers of Russian soldiers, was gaining steam.

The movement began in September, when the Kremlin announced that soldiers mobilized a year earlier would not be relieved of their duties on the battlefield as promised. The plan to recruit enough volunteers to serve in their place was a failure, and Putin was reluctant to announce a second mobilization for fear of igniting widespread opposition. (As Russian opposition leader Vladimir Milov points out, “Russians may be prepared to ‘support’ the war verbally, but they are clearly not rushing to fight themselves.”)

The women, who go to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier near Red Square in Moscow to lay flowers every Saturday, have supported Putin’s presidency in the past. But their stance has hardened as the Kremlin ignores their pleas, with some even labeling Putin a coward, and they recently met with Nadezhdin to coordinate their plans.

A poll conducted in December by the independent Russian Field project showed that almost 50 percent of respondents supported the demands of these women. The Kremlin has little choice but to tolerate the movement, whose Telegram channel has nearly 40,000 subscribers, because punitive action against its members would make them martyrs and draw more sympathy to their cause. This past Saturday, when around 100 women appeared outside the Kremlin to protest, police arrested journalists who were covering the occasion. When some protesters tried to block the police van carrying them away, the police only pushed the women aside without detaining them.

Meanwhile, in mid-January, mass protests erupted in Bashkortostan, a mineral-rich region in Russia’s southern Ural mountains, against the prison conviction of a Bashkir ethnic rights leader named Fail Alsynov. The conviction ignited deeper grievances, in particular resentment that Bashkirs are bearing an outsize burden in the Ukraine conflict. A video posted recently on social media showed a group of Bashkir soldiers addressing the Russian government: “If you don’t stop acting against our people, against our fathers and mothers, we will abandon our positions and come for you. If you want a war, you will get it.”

The most concrete challenge to Putin has come from Nadezhdin’s prospective candidacy in March’s presidential election. A former State Duma deputy from the liberal Union of Right Forces party, Nadezhdin is running as an outspoken and defiant critic of the war, calling the Ukraine invasion a “fatal mistake.”

Nadezhdin collected more than double the 100,000 signatures required for his name to appear on the ballot and submitted 105,000 of them to the Central Election Commission last week. Political analysts were astounded by the record-breaking queues to register signatures in cities all across Russia.

As expected, the Central Election Commission announced on Monday that it found flaws in slightly more than 15 percent of the signatures. Nadezhdin plans to dispute the errors on Wednesday when he meets with the commission for its final decision on his candidacy. If he is disqualified, as most observers expect he will be, Nadezhdin will appeal to the Russian Supreme Court. That effort will almost certainly also fail. But Nadezhdin has said he has a Plan B: He will ask the 200,000 people who backed his candidacy with their signatures to apply for permission to hold legal protests in 150 cities throughout the country.

The political significance of these open expressions of opposition to the war should not be underestimated. As veteran Russian political observer Abbas Gallyamov recently explained, through repression and propaganda the regime creates the impression that it is supported by the majority. “Loyalists can express their opinions openly, but critics must remain silent. So a dissatisfied person is left feeling alone … and does not see that there are many people nearby who think the same way as he does.” This is why, Gallyamov says, public acts of political dissent are so valuable. They show individuals what society actually thinks.

After Putin was elected to a third term in March 2012, tens of thousands of protesters, led by Alexei Navalny, took to the streets, greatly alarming the Kremlin. Navalny’s dissenters were largely well-educated young people protesting alleged voter fraud. Now, the threat to Putin is more ominous because the opposition includes former supporters from the working class who are unhappy over a war he started.

Putin will win his reelection in March, regardless of whether Nadezhdin is on the ballot. But that won’t put an end to the growing discontent over the war, especially if the Russian leader orders a second mobilization to throw fresh troops into the so-called meat grinder in Ukraine.

As Russian opposition politician Leonid Gozman observed, Putin’s administration might have seriously misjudged the people’s mood: “There now exists an open wound — the war in Ukraine. Whichever issue you press upon now, the pain will radiate in that wound.”

And an emboldened antiwar movement is likely to press on.