By Angelina Davydova, freelance journalist, co-host of the podcast The Eurasian Climate Brief; fellow with the Institute for Global Reconstitution; environmental/climate projects expert with the Dialogue for Understanding e. V.: media trainer, lecturer, facilitator; observer of the UN climate negotiations (UNFCCC) since 2008; councilor of the World Future Council.
Despite the growing repressions on opposition, civil society and media representatives in Russia since the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, not all civil society structures, including environmental protests, have disappeared. Across many regions in the country environmental groups are protesting against local problems, such as air and water pollution, mismanagement of waste or demolition of green zones. Some of the activists are being prosecuted, but a number of campaigns have also led to positive results.
Environmental and urban campaigns and protests were one of the most actively growing and developing segments of Russia’s civil society before 2022. The beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in late February 2022 led to further repressions on political and civil society activists and journalists, targeting a wide range of activities, including statements on social media which often included criticism of the war or further expressions of political dissent.
Still, some form of protest, campaigning and advocacy is still possible even in such limiting political conditions. Environmental protests and campaigning, many of which stopped or paused after February 2022 for a few months, actually resumed after a while, and many new campaigns began.
One can divide these protests and campaigns into the two major groups: the ones initiated by grassroot groups and the ones held by the more professional NGOs/expert groups.
There are a few reasons why the grass-root groups still remain active. One of them is that within Russian society there’s a clear demand for normalisation of life taking place against the fourth year of the war that the country is leading. That normalisation is visible, in fact most visitors to large Russian cities keep writing how “normal” life is there now. But it also includes demands for better functioning urban and housing infrastructure, for a cleaner environment and for more efficient public services.
Most grassroot protests and campaigns are developing around local and hyper-local environmental problems: air and water pollution, mismanagement of landfills, plans to build a new incinerator, cutting down a forest, demolishing a city park – something that people can see, hear or smell.
Another reason could be that participating in environmental, urban or social campaigns is one of the ways to demonstrate at least some kind of civic involvement and solidarity in a highly repressive political regime. Many analysts outlined that as one of the reasons behind a large-scale civic mobilisation to help tackle the aftermath of the oil spill in December 2024. Then, thousands of Russian volunteers from all over the country, went to the shores of the Black Sea in the south of Russia to help clean beaches and birds from the oil products.
Paradoxically, many of these protests are not being considered to be ‘political’ and are actually being tolerated by the local and federal authorities. In many cases they look like “true grassroot movements” and “expressions of public moods and desires” and not as an “influence from abroad”. As a result, sometimes they lead to actual changes, including success in their campaigns or changes in regional governments. A number of Kremlin-close bloggers and (still) anonymous Telegram channels often report on how environmental concerns remain to be an important topic in the public/civic agenda and should be taken seriously, not suppressed. Instead, they should be worked with, and further, instrumentalised or coopted. One consequence of such an approach is the growth of directly state-organised or state-supported environmental organisations (the so called GONGOs). They are often portrayed as a ‘safe alternative’ to environmental activism, as organisations which work towards a better environment and quality of life and also help young people learn about project management and work with local communities, simultaneously providing them with better career chances.
Many authentic grassroot protesters in Russia are also aware of the fact that speaking publicly of their protest as ‘unpolitical’ and not keeping open contacts with international experts (or Russian environmental experts or activists in exile) might also be beneficial for their campaigns (it is worth noting that within the Russian environmental community many are sustaining informal contact with the activists and experts who have left Russia).
Even though a lot of what environmental activists in Russia do (and sometimes achieve) can be described as ‘political’ they still prefer to frame it as ‘unpolitical’.
And some of them (as already mentioned above) even achieve their results – and a dangerous project is stopped, the park is kept, polluting discharges cleaned. Here one can read a list of such ‘environmental victories’ prepared by the Environmental Crisis Group (an initiative monitoring environmental protests and pressure on environmental activists in Russia).
Yet, very often environmental protesters and campaigners have to make tough choices on an everyday basis. Does it make sense to participate in the work of the government-created structures for civil society representatives, like the Civic Chambers? Does it make sense to cooperate with political parties’ regional representatives, including the United Russia or the Communist party, some of whom do help environmental campaigns. Is inviting a veteran returning from the war in Ukraine to be a public speaker for a local environmental campaign a good idea?
It should be said, that not all environmental activists and participants of environmental campaigns share a critical view of the war in Ukraine: For example,discussions about the war in a number of groups were stopped in the first months of the war, ever since then many participants of these regional environmental campaigns merely talk about their common cause. Of course, on the other side, some environmental protesters are also speaking openly against the war in Ukraine and are being prosecuted for that.
As such, being an environmental activist or starting an environmental campaign in Russia is very often dangerous. Activists and experts are being prosecuted and persecuted, threatened, beaten up, imprisoned or fined. Environmental Crisis Group regularly monitors pressure on environmental activists, environmental lawyers, animal rights and animal welfare activists and anti-nuclear activists.
A very recent worrying case is a wave of repressive actions against indigenous human rights defenders, which has been happening since December 2025. On December 17, Darya Egereva, an ethnic Selkup, was arrested in Moscow. She is a co-chair of the The International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC), a member of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) and a long-standing participant in the international indigenous rights movement. Another female indigenous activist, whose name has not yet been released, was simultaneously arrested in connection with the same cases, and at least 17 indigenous peoples across the country were subjected to searches and interrogations. These actions were clearly coordinated, happening in 10 regions of the country. Darya Egereva, along with a few other colleagues, was actively involved in international advocacy, including on climate change issues, and participated in the UN processes (also in the UNFCCC).
The last few years have also witnessed growing pressure on professional environmental/climate NGOs, including many international ones. Greenpeace, WWF, Bellona and a few others have been declared ‘undesirable’ and had to close their offices in Russia (some of them later opened offices working on Russia in other countries). Many further professional environmental NGOs who for years worked on environmental legislation, did advocacy, media and public campaigns and numerous further projects, have had to deal with a number of further bureaucratic hurdles. For instance, some were declared ‘foreign agents’ and had to close or go to court, many had to stop getting financial support from international donors or engage in international cooperation as such. Yet, a number of these organisations continue their work in the country, even in the most difficult conditions. Among the recent campaigns environmental experts and scientists in Russia have recently initiated is a campaign to stop dangerous reforms of legislation on nature protected areas – regarding amendments that may allow changing borders of nature protected zones and permit further construction on their territories – or allowing clearcutting around Lake Baikal.
Despite growing pressure on the independent civil society and activists, environmental campaigns in Russia continue to emerge and, in some cases, succeed, especially when framed as non-political. Environmental campaigns remain one of the few spaces where civic engagement is still possible and even at times effective. At the same time, the increasing risks faced by activists and organisations underline that the picture isn’t all rosy: the future of environmental advocacy and activism in Russia is still fraught with danger.
