Russia-Ukraine War: Impact on Russian Civil Society

Abstract

On February 24 this year, Russia launched its “special military operations” against Ukraine and that set-in motion a chain of events which have had immense repercussions on all forms of Russian life. According to President Putin, this operation on Ukraine was necessary in order to “denazify” and “demilitarise” Ukraine. Many Russian experts believed that the operation was long overdue and the Russian side had been preparing for it, especially in the wake of the large Russian military presence on its border areas with Ukraine from 2021 onwards. In this article, I have argued how the Russian civil society, a fragile space struggling to reclaim its place in the country in the aftermath of the Foreign Agents Law in 2012, is impacted by the Russia- Ukraine war and how it conducts itself now will decide the future of civil society space in Russia.