On 24 February, around 5:30 a.m. Moscow time, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a special military operation in Ukraine, stating its goals as “denazification” and “demilitarization”. This operation had been in preparation for a long time – Russian troops had been moving to the border with Ukraine for several months. At the same time, the leadership of our country denied any possibility of an attack. It is now evident this was a lie.

Russia has declared a new war on a neighboring country and left it with no right to self-determination and no hope for a peaceful life. This is not the first time Russia has declared war: we realize that the war has been going on for eight years on the initiative of the Russian Federation and that the war in Donbas is a consequence of the illegal annexation of Crimea. We believe that Russia and its president do not care and have never cared about the fate of the people in Luhansk and Donetsk, and that the recognition of the republics 8 years later was only necessary for the invasion of Ukraine under the guise of liberation purposes.

Feminism as a political force cannot support war, especially war of conquest. Feminism stands for the development of society, for helping those who are vulnerable, for increasing opportunities and prospects, and advocates for the elimination of violence and peaceful coexistence.

War is violence, poverty, forced migration, broken lives, insecurity and lack of future prospects. It is antithetical to the essence of the feminist movement. War reinforces gender inequality and can set back all human rights achievements by many years. War brings not only physical violence, but also sexualized violence: history shows that during wars, any woman is several times more likely to be raped. For these and many other reasons, feminists in Russia and those who share the values of equality need to speak out strongly against this war launched by our country’s leadership.

The current war, as Putin’s speech demonstrates, is also being waged under the banner of the so-called “traditional values”, which Russia has supposedly decided to propagate to the world, using violence against those who do not agree with them or hold different views. What these “traditional values” consist of is clear to anyone who can think critically: they are based, among other things, on the exploitation of women and the fight against those whose lifestyle, identities and activities go beyond the narrow patriarchal norm. Justifying the occupation of a neighboring state by the desire to bring its distorted norm and demagogic «liberation» to it is another reason why feminists throughout Russia should resist this war with all their might.

Feminists are one of the most active political forces in modern Russia. For a long time, the authorities did not perceive us as a political movement, so we have been temporarily less affected by repressions than others. More than 45 feminist groups are active throughout the country, from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok. We call on feminist groups and individual feminists to join the Feminist Anti-War Resistance and join forces against the war and the government that unleashed it.

There are many of us, and together we can do a lot: for the last 10 years, the feminist movement has been gaining enormous media and cultural power; it is time to turn it into political power. We are the opposition to war, patriarchy, authoritarianism and militarism. We are the future, and we will win.

An Addition to the Manifesto of Feminist Anti-War Resistance

In addition to our main manifesto, we are publishing a collective refinement and program gathered from various activists and FAR branches through an open call.

We are feminist and equality-minded people who form networks of resistance and solidarity both within the Russian Federation and around the world. We consistently oppose the war in Ukraine, any war of occupation and imperialism, and the rule of dictatorial regimes.

Whom we support

• Ukrainian women experiencing war, Ukrainian refugees and migrated women affected by Russian actions; Ukrainian feminists and activists and their political demands;
• Russian feminists opposing the war, Russian women facing increasing levels of gender-based violence and the deterioration of their lives due to the war;
• Political prisoners and activists facing state and police violence and prosecution;
• Citizens facing the economic consequences of war and discrimination for views in the workplace, labor economic protests;
• Women from different nations of Russia, women’s decolonial protests;
• Russian families who fight against conscription of their relatives and obligatory military service;
• LGBTQ+community who have faced increased pressure and violence during the war, and other vulnerable groups whose rights and opportunities are affected by the war and crisis (people with disabilities, elderly people, people undergoing medical treatment, single parents);
• Opposition politicians who oppose the war.

What we stand for and what we fight against

• We advocate for the complete withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine and the return of all occupied territories to Ukraine (restoration of the 1991 borders);
• We advocate for the values of conscious pacifism, within the framework of which we recognize that defense against military aggression cannot be non-violent;
• We call for the demilitarization of the Russian Federation: all these years, despite the 2014 sanctions, European states have been supplying Russia with weapons, thus making a significant contribution to today’s war. All global trade treaties related to Russian arms should be canceled or renegotiated. We are also fighting for internal demilitarization: the production of military equipment should be limited, and all security agencies (police, army, Federal Penitentiary Service, FSS, etc.) should undergo serious reorganization and reforms so as not to threaten not only the outside world, but also our own citizens, who face daily politically motivated violence from security agencies.
• We insist that funding Russian militarism from the sale of coal, gas and oil should be stopped.
• We fight against gender-based violence and discrimination in all its shapes and forms, be it domestic or sexualized violence. We fight for a law on domestic violence, we fight for the repeal of discriminatory laws on so-called “LGBT propaganda”. A society that is tolerant of domestic violence, a society that labels some families acceptable and others not, is also more tolerant of militaristic violence: all violence is connected, and we as feminists are aware of this. War starts at home. We also fight for reproductive justice for all: every woman should have the right to have a child as well as an affordable and safe abortion, maternal and parental labor should have decent state support, access to contraception should not be hindered or restricted. Demographic problems should not be solved by banning abortion or controlling other people’s bodies, but by sustainable social policies and raising living standards. For this, war must stop immediately.
• We fight for decent working conditions for all and for respect for the labor rights of citizens. Since the beginning of the war, the number of dismissed, downsized and unemployed is steadily increasing, while the employers are utilizing their power and pressure to punish workers for their anti-war stance. The first to suffer from the reduction of labor laws are women and so-called national
  minorities, migrant workers. We support the work of independent trade unions and strikes.
• We fight against Putin’s dictatorship in Russia. We believe impeachment and trial of all officials involved in this war is necessary. We also advocate for the abolition of conservative amendments to the constitution, as well as the abolition of censorship and dissolution of the institution of state propaganda, for freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. We oppose the monopoly of the state
  on the information field and on the sphere of culture and education.
• We support an exchange of prisoners – all for all, the return to Ukraine of all Ukrainian children and orphans who were involuntarily taken to the Russian Federation, and an international trial of all war criminals. We are in favor of reparations to Ukraine for the damage caused. The money that the Russian Federation is currently spending on the continuation of this war should be used for the reconstruction of Ukraine.
• We oppose discrimination against all ethnicities and peoples of Russia on the territory of Russia. We stand against forced Russification and neglect of local history and context. Russia needs decolonization: at the level of education, culture and collective memory, we must learn and understand our present and past, the history of crimes against different peoples during the Tsarist and Soviet times (deportations, repression, imprisonment, extermination of people on the basis of nationality, destruction of foreign cultures and languages). Equality of all languages and
  cultures, ensuring security for all nationalities on the territory of the Russian Federation and liberation of Russia itself from Russian fascism and Nazism is a priority task for our common future.

Our goals for the near-term anti-war campaign are the following

• To attract new groups of supporters: go beyond the activist bubble. We need to find strategies to reach out to people directly affected by the war, people who have lost loved ones, people trying to bring their families back from the front, people who want to become conscientious objectors.
• To promote the agenda of refusal of military service and support our common work with human rights defenders to widely disseminate information on how to avoid military service, how not to go to military training camps, how to get into alternative civilian service.
• To develop the helping and supporting function of the anti-war movement. In the absence of assistance from the state, we can help more people who are facing a difficult material situation because of the war, as well as support prisoners of war and activists in the Russian Federation facing persecution. Also, our helping function should target groups both inside the Russian Federation – such as Ukrainian citizens taken from the occupied territories, and outside the Russian Federation – such as Ukrainian refugees. We will continue to provide legal and psychological counseling for all those who need it.
• To overcome information blockade in the Russian Federation: continue developing as an anti-war media outlet by publishing anti-war newspapers, leaflets and stickers, covering new social networks, bypassing bans, publishing anti-war news and finding access to different audiences. Our movement strives to be an anti-war agitator among other goals.
• To practice a more conscious and sustainable approach to collective street actions: formulate the pragmatics of actions, involve more different people in the discussions, preparation and implementation. It is important to divide actions into those done by activists outside Russia and those done by activists who remain in Russia. We want activists from Russia to have more direct influence on actions outside Russia. As before, everyone can propose an action and its format, but it is important to make the selection criteria more transparent – what is accepted for distribution and what is not.
• To develop effective mechanisms for redistributing resources from activists outside the Russian Federation to activists staying in the Russian Federation.
• To develop safer, more transparent and horizontal regulations for all those who want to be part of FAR and are willing to be in partial communication with all areas of work.
• To create sustainable anti-war communities throughout Russia in the form of groups. To make the practices of GGAC – groups for the growth of anti-war consciousness – recognizable and widespread. Anti-war communities can then turn into anti-war cells.
• To support existing regional anti-war initiatives.
• To develop a campaign for reproductive justice: to openly educate citizens on how the conservative and militaristic agenda negatively affects the living standards of children and women in our country, their safety and, as a consequence, the demographic situation as a whole. To highlight the ineffective work of the Russian Federation’s social policy in supporting childhood and motherhood.
• To support international cooperation: conduct global transnational anti-war actions in collaboration with global anti-war movements.

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