Russia’s military has institutionalized the recruitment of convicts into its ranks as it seeks to shore up its numbers for the war in Ukraine. Building upon a system pioneered by the Wagner mercenary group, the previously informal practice allows convicts a chance at redemption in exchange for risking their lives on the front lines —…
In 2023, Russian authorities actively advocated for increased childbearing among women and intensified their stance against abortion while also promoting the idea that the role of a woman is to be a homemaker. Yet women were also changemakers, with the wives and mothers of mobilized soldiers becoming a leading voice of dissent toward the end…
Russia launched a massive air attack over Ukraine on Friday, killing at least 30 people and wounding over a hundred across the country in the fiercest assault since the first days of the war nearly two years ago. Schools, a maternity hospital, shopping arcades and blocks of flats were among the buildings hit in the…
A record-setting 5,593 Russian soldiers faced trials in 2023 for desertions and other offenses related to refusal to serve, the independent news website Mediazona reported Friday. Russia passed laws in the fall of 2022 tightening punishments for acts committed during mobilization, including voluntary surrender, conscientious objection and desertion. Mediazona said Russian courts received 5,024 cases relating to…
In 2023 the Russian world of dance went largely inward, focusing on Russian traditions of dance, supporting regional initiatives, and organizing festivals. There were few exchanges of dancers and joint projects, and only with non-Western countries. Losses or gains? On the regional level there were several somewhat positive developments. In 2022, Ivanovo University has opened…
Put’ Dumoi (Way Home), a Russian movement of mostly wives and mothers of mobilized soldiers calling for the return of their loved ones from the frontlines and an end to mobilization, has released a video plea of a soldier’s widow decrying the invasion of Ukraine. The nine-minute-long video recorded by St. Petersburg native Maria Ishkova…
One out of every two Russians wish for the war in Ukraine to end in 2024, according to survey results from the Russian Field polling agency published Friday. When asked what they wish for Russians in the New Year, 50% of Russian Field’s respondents named “peace, a peaceful sky, and the end of” what the Kremlin…
Russia launched a massive drone and missile attack across Ukrainian cities on Friday, leaving at least 16 dead and 97 wounded. In one of the most aggressive air offensives of the 22-month war, Moscow’s strikes damaged buildings in six cities including warehouses, a shopping mall, and a maternity hospital, according to Ukrainian officials. The strikes…
A court in Siberia has sentenced an ally of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to nine years in prison on charges of creating an “extremist organization,” the independent news website Mediazona reported Friday. Ksenia Fadeyeva, 31, Navalny’s former Tomsk regional coordinator, was detained in December 2021 after a Moscow court outlawed Navalny’s political network as “extremist.”…