‘A hostile world’: As fear and mistrust reshape everyday life in wartime Russia, some are still finding ways to build community

Inside Russia, loneliness has become one of the war’s less visible but pervasive consequences. Many people are afraid to interact with others, because even an innocent conversation about peace could cost them their freedom — and so they remain alone with their pain. Others have lost interest in public life, seeing little opportunity to make a difference, and have focused on their families instead. It’s not only people with antiwar views who complain of isolation and fear, but also people who support the war. And yet some people do manage to find a way out of this impossible situation. The independent journalists’ cooperative Bereg reports on how. Meduza is translating the story in full.

Note: This article contains explicit language.

‘It feels like we ended up in a hostile world’

Oleg’s family in the Moscow region woke up one night in June 2026 to explosions and drones roaring over their house at four in the morning. Going back to sleep was out of the question — it was too frightening.

That morning, Oleg says, there were “no sirens, no alerts” warning of the attack — as if even the warnings themselves were banned in Russia.

Oleg, who is about 40, owns a small clothing manufacturing business. He had been mentally bracing for a morning like this since the start of the full-scale war — but he still wasn’t ready.

Oleg isn’t a political activist, but the full-scale invasion devastated him — and he had almost no one to talk to about it.

“There were a couple of run-ins [on the street] over the peace sign sewn onto my clothes,” Oleg recalls. “At first they’d say something really negative, like “I don’t like this shit” or “I’m against this.”” He managed to turn those complaints into “conversations about hippie culture.”

One coworker, the entrepreneur says, “turned out to be a Putinist”: “He started saying that the West wants to seize us and always has, and that they “brought down the Soviet Union”… I had a rough idea [of his views], but I didn’t know how far they went. I didn’t try to start conversations like that — so as not to spoil the relationship.”

Before the war, Oleg was outgoing and made friends easily. Now he focuses entirely on his family and avoids meeting new people.

Many Russians are tormented by their inability to speak freely about the situation in their country — a condition that could be called “political loneliness,” though not everyone Bereg spoke with for this story agrees with the term.

Censorship and fear for their freedom and their lives have forced Russians into silence, and many are afraid to discuss politics or the war in any form. Because only state rhetoric is voiced openly, many come to feel that alternative views are unpopular — producing an acute sense of isolation.

Natalya (name changed at her request), an instructor at Vladimir State University, describes her wartime feelings as “the fear of being misunderstood and breaking off relationships with people who used to be close.” “I’ve become cautious about certain topics, as if I’m carefully choosing my words so as not to misjudge a person’s position and become disappointed in them. And I’ve already become disappointed in many.”

Taisiya (name changed at her request), a Moscow resident in her 50s, feels much the same as Oleg and Natalya: “It feels like we ended up in a hostile world where nobody shares your views at all. And it’s no longer clear whether you can talk about anything, or what it might lead to. It weighs on you psychologically.”

‘I didn’t think it was illegal to answer questions about organizations designated “terrorist”’

In February 2023, a stranger sent 24-year-old Polina Yevtushenko a friend request on VK.

Nikolai Tsarev, who said he was from Samara, sent a friendly message asking about her job at the mobile carrier Yota and her interest in drawing — details Polina had mentioned on social media. She replied, and the two began exchanging messages.

“Kolya asked whether I could draw him — and draw him with “Korzh” [a type of cake layer]. I thought he wanted a portrait with a cake. I told him I wasn’t very good at it but could try. Then we talked about music, and he said he liked [Belarusian musician] Max Korzh,” Polina Yevtushenko recalled of how it began, in a letter to Bereg. Afterward, their exchanges settled into “simple, everyday topics.”

Yevtushenko grew up in Tolyatti and had a daughter at 19, the independent Russian outlet Holod reported. She raised the child alone while building a career.

She didn’t hide her views and was outspoken on social media, posting at times in Ukrainian and using blunt Instagram hashtags like “NoToWar,” “PutinKhuilo,” “FreedomOfRussiaLegion,” and “RussiaWithoutPutin.”

“Tolyatti, don’t stay silent! No to war!” Yevtushenko wrote shortly after Russia announced its mobilization in fall 2022. Around that time, she wore a T-shirt with an upside-down “Fuck Putin” print and carried a backpack with a Ukrainian flag and the words “No to war.”

By the time Tsarev wrote to her, Polina had already quit Yota to launch her own business, an online store selling women’s sportswear that she planned to sell through Wildberries. She completed courses for young entrepreneurs and even won a grant from regional authorities to get it off the ground.

After a couple of weeks of messaging, Tsarev told Polina he was coming to Tolyatti on a business trip and suggested meeting up. He said he worked as a sales representative for a company that sold car-cleaning products, but Polina later recalled getting the impression he didn’t work anywhere at all — he was always free.

During their meeting, Polina noticed “small oddities” in her new acquaintance’s behavior. “His hands were shaking badly.” He asked strange questions. “Out of nowhere, with no connection to what we’d been talking about, he asked, “I read on your page about the [Freedom of Russia] Legion. What if I joined the legion?””

The question caught Yevtushenko off guard. It embarrassed her, but she answered anyway — she “didn’t think it was illegal to answer questions about organizations designated as terrorist.”

At later meetings, Tsarev kept steering the conversation back to the Freedom of Russia Legion.

“Tsarev” was actually Nikolai Komarov. He recorded their conversations on a dictaphone and passed the recordings to officers of Russia’s Federal Security Service, the FSB. He and Yevtushenko talked for about five months.

On the morning of July 12, 2023, Polina walked her 5-year-old daughter to kindergarten. As she stepped back through the gate, someone struck her in the back, and she fell to the ground. When she turned around, she saw more than 10 men in plain clothes.

“They put a plastic zip tie on my wrists and threw me into the car like a sack of potatoes. Then the men got in and put their feet on me. They didn’t explain anything. I thought they were criminals and that I was being taken away to be killed,” she later told Holod.

The next day, a court in Samara ordered Yevtushenko held in pretrial detention for two months on suspicion of “inducing” Komarov — “Tsarev” — to commit treason. Investigators alleged she had been persuading him to join the legion and fight against Russia.

Yevtushenko insists she did no such thing and says that would have been obvious if the court had reviewed the full recordings of their conversations. “The parts that could have exonerated me were left out, and you can hear it — the conversations simply cut off.”

The human rights group First Department also noted that one of the recordings presented in court captured Komarov rehearsing talking points about the legion out loud before meeting with Yevtushenko.

Komarov likely became a provocateur as early as 2017, when he volunteered at Navalny’s Samara headquarters. In 2020, he testified as a prosecution witness in an administrative case against Marina Yevdokimova, a former headquarters staffer who was running for a seat on the Samara district council at the time.

Prosecutors later added several more charges to Yevtushenko’s original charge. A court sentenced her in March 2026 to 14 years in prison; she does not admit guilt. The human rights group Memorial considers her a political prisoner.

‘Since 2022, meeting new people has become stressful and scary’

Antiwar Russians who spoke to Bereg say making new acquaintances has grown far scarier since February 2022 — especially in small towns.

Natalya, the Vladimir State University instructor, says her circle now consists of just a couple of friends and family: “Since 2022, meeting new people has felt stressful and scary — what if this is a spy or an FSB agent who’s going to report you? Even trying to meet people for a relationship feels dangerous.”

Natalya says she misses talking with like-minded people. People she once considered “reasonable” “stopped being that way” after the full-scale invasion began, and trying to talk war supporters out of their views, in her view, “isn’t worth it — it’s unnecessary and even dangerous.”

Finding like-minded people is even harder for older Russians.

Making new friends after 50 is difficult enough already, says Yulia (name changed), a 60-year-old Moscow resident. She has no idea how to meet people now that sharing your thoughts can be dangerous: “Some of the people close to me have left. It’s especially sad when children leave — it deepens the sense of despair, and it gets harder and harder to find meaning in what’s happening.”

Yulia works in the entertainment industry, where, she says, it’s “long since become impossible to discuss what actually worries you.”

Yulia doesn’t consider herself an activist. Before the war, she never went to rallies, though she spoke out on social media in support of political prisoners, called for fair elections, and urged her followers to donate to the independent Russian human rights monitor OVD-Info.

In the spring of 2022, she secretly hung green protest ribbons in courtyards and on playgrounds: “I was scared, but it was my own quiet protest.”

For Yulia, wartime has become a period when it’s hard to talk even with acquaintances. “I’m always carefully choosing my words, trying to figure out where it’s appropriate to say something and where it’s not,” she says. She calls it “a throwback to Soviet times,” since she has to “communicate in half-truths” even “with people who you know share your point of view” — in case outsiders overhear the conversation:

Aesopian language is now used in Russia not just at work but within close circles too, according to Veronika Danilova, a sociologist at the NGO Arendt Labs and co-author of a recent study of Russian civic initiatives titled “Solidarity Under Pressure”.

“Many of our respondents talked about growing self-censorship even in conversations with friends, because there’s no certainty about anyone,” Danilova says. “This is noticeable even among those who used to be the most politically outspoken and who, as recently as 2024, expressed themselves much more freely.”

Yulia recalls cautiously joking about the regime in a recent conversation with a coworker she barely knew — and he told her: “God, I’m so glad to hear we’re on the same wavelength!”

She smiled for the rest of the day.

Natalya would like to find like-minded people but has no idea where in Vladimir she could meet others she could be herself with. She’s heard that local activists recently tried to launch a regional branch of the Rassvet party — an effort that ended with searches.

“Most of my friends and like-minded people who took an active position have either left the country or are in prison,” says Pyotr (name changed), who lives in a small city in northwestern Russia and remains politically active.

“The disunity and atomization of people inside Russia who oppose the war is a fact. But that’s a deliberate policy of the Kremlin,” Pyotr continues.

Left-wing politician and labor activist Mikhail Lobanov, who has continued his political work since being forced to leave Russia, says regional activists he knows have come under close scrutiny from security officials.

“They were essentially advised to disengage from everything, [meaning any political activity]. Some of those people left the country. And some really did withdraw from active political and social life.”

The situation facing independent civic projects has steadily worsened since 2024, when the Arendt Labs study came out, amid growing pressure from the state, Danilova says.

As recently as two years ago, human rights defenders looked to Belarus’s experience and expected Russian authorities to designate civic and political initiatives as foreign agents first, then as undesirable organizations, and only later as extremist. But the cases of the human rights groups Memorial and OVD-Info showed that “everything can happen much faster than that.”

Now many projects fear being hit immediately with the most discriminatory label of all, extremist status, Danilova concludes.

‘Today there’s a need to do something’

For several years, Taisiya has led themed walking tours through central Moscow. Along the way, participants come across plaques from “Last Address”, a project on building facades that preserves the memory of victims of Stalin-era terror.

“When you tell the history of Moscow — whether it’s culture, the history of theaters, or the history of science — you inevitably run into the subject of terror. If you don’t touch on the Stalinist repressions, many details and people’s motivations become impossible to understand,” Taisiya explains.

Once, after the full-scale war began, she was leading another tour when she noticed people in the group who had already walked the route before.

“Every time I see familiar faces on my tour of the sites of repression, I feel like a mom whose child is asking her to read the same fairy tale for the 10th time,” Taisiya says with a smile. Some people, she says, had come “probably five times already.”

Taisiya tried to understand why and settled on a simple explanation: “it seems that it’s important for people to be among their own”:

Around the same time, at the start of the full-scale war, “Last Address” plaques on some buildings began disappearing. Unknown people were smashing and unscrewing them “whole districts at a time,” Taisiya says. The makers of the documentary Karton “Cardboard,” by the studio Razrez, found one of the people responsible for the vandalism: Gosha Tarasevich, leader of the nationalist movement SERB.

One of the regulars on Taisiya’s tours then suggested cutting out cardboard plaques and hanging them where the originals had been torn down. “A group of people from the tours took it upon themselves to look after the plaques. At first there were just a few of them, but the group gradually grew to a couple dozen.”

After one tour, Taisiya stopped at a cafe for coffee. When she came out, she ran into the same tour participants she had just said goodbye to, walking down the lane with a notebook and pen, checking whether the plaques were still in place.

When the volunteers held a workshop on cutting out cardboard duplicates, 40 people showed up, according to Taisiya — they barely fit in the room.

She’s struck that volunteers with no obligations to one another keep the project going on their own. In wartime, under censorship and persecution, she believes people want to make at least some contribution to a common cause:

Sociologist Veronika Danilova also says there’s strong demand for participation in offline initiatives: “It’s getting stronger every year. It’s important for people to feel their own agency, no matter what.”

The nature of these projects has changed since the war began: many people gave up political work for small, often local civic initiatives, Danilova says. Projects that feel safe to Russians tend to center on the environment or culture — activists take part in neighborhood cleanup days or form book clubs, for example.

Little by little, members of these communities may “start carefully feeling out whether a given person is “one of us” or “not one of us,”” the researcher says, recounting her conversations with respondents in Russia:

Right now, Danilova says, people’s main efforts are focused on “survival and preserving themselves and their organizations.”

‘I wouldn’t want anyone to get the impression that we’re a secret cell’

It’s an April day in downtown Moscow, and dozens of people are learning to juggle right there on the street. Nearby, tables hold Easter breads, painted eggs, and steaming samovars, while children laugh and run around. One participant has brought along several stray dogs, hoping to find them owners.

That’s what another Sunday looked like this spring on Danilovskaya Alley, between Pokrovsky Boulevard and Solyanka Street. Since the summer of 2020, weekly “Khokhlovsky vigils” have taken place here — an open-ended street protest to preserve the historic character of the Ivanovskaya Gorka neighborhood.

The vigils take their name from Khokhlovsky Lane, where a large business center is under construction. Participants are demanding that construction stop and that the historic garden of the Jurgenson estate, destroyed in the 1930s, be restored. The Institute of the International Labor Movement was later built on the site in Soviet times; it has now been torn down to make way for a business center twice the institute’s size.

Participants believe the construction violates the law on protected zones around cultural heritage sites.

“Put simply, you can only build something that regenerates the historic setting of the landmarks at a given site,” Dmitry Charakhchyan, a lawyer who takes part in the vigils, explained. “And it’s obvious that the historic setting of the landmark was the Jurgenson garden, and by law that’s the only thing that can be recreated here. No business center was ever part of the setting of the cultural heritage sites, and one can’t be built right in the middle of the estate.”

Gatherings on Ivanovskaya Gorka happen every Sunday, rain or snow. So far, organizers have held 300 free concerts, tours, lectures, exhibitions, and workshops there.

Some events draw 200 people, says Maria (name changed at her request), a preservationist activist. The crowd isn’t limited to Ivanovskaya Gorka residents, she says — Muscovites come from outlying districts, too.

Although the standoffs pursue exclusively peaceful goals, police have shown up several times with utterly absurd complaints, Maria recalls: “They had questions about whether a samovar counts as an open flame. They were told a samovar is a closed flame.”

Officers were offered tea, and in the end everything ended fine. Maria adds that breaking up the Petrushka puppet theater actors performing for protesters that day would have been “downright Pinocchio-esque.”

The people who take part, she says, “are defending people’s right to a cultural living environment”: “People are always drawn to the chance to talk with like-minded people. But I wouldn’t want anyone to get the impression that the gatherings are a secret cell. We try hard not to be that.”

* * *

The study by Danilova and her Arendt Labs co-authors confirms that many Russians are coping with loneliness by seeking out communities where they can share common values with someone.

“The viewpoint they [war opponents] might gravitate toward isn’t represented in public discourse, and they’re desperately looking for places where they can feel like they’re among their own and relax, if only a little,” Danilova says.

But Russians who are ambivalent about the war, or who even support the invasion, feel isolated, too, and “suffer from a sense of being judged.”

In interviews with respondents in Russia, Danilova and her colleagues found that people who provide humanitarian aid to mobilized soldiers and service members, or who weave camouflage nets for the front, describe the same isolation and fear as antiwar Russians. Some even hid from coworkers that they were helping the Russian military.

“People in general try not to state their position outright, to sort of blur it. You’d think [pro-war] views like that are represented absolutely everywhere. But people are anxious and feel like outcasts,” Danilova says.

In her view, this stems from political repression that after 2022 spread far beyond the openly oppositional, while the “rules of the game” governing public life in a Russia at war remain unclear. As a result, self-censorship and a “survival logic” are spreading through society regardless of political conviction.

In some fields, such as historic preservation or environmental activism, many experts deliberately distance themselves from politics, try to bring together people with different views, and avoid sensitive topics, Danilova says: “This strategy is based on the premise that we all share the same air, the same planet.”

“When you’re united by the goal of protecting something with objective value, you learn to negotiate with each other and get something done together,” says Maria, the preservationist activist from Ivanovskaya Gorka:

Politician Yulia Galyamina, designated a foreign agent in Russia, decided not to leave the country after the war began, despite her suspended sentence and the risks that come with it.

In conversation with Bereg, Galyamina stresses that antiwar views are, first and foremost, about a desire for peace — and so rest on the idea of dialogue. That’s why, she insists, “you need to learn to have a dialogue with people who have a different outlook on life.”

The inability to talk about political topics “without starting to hate the person you’re talking to over their different view” is a real problem in Russian society, one “that needs to be worked on,” Galyamina believes.

(Galyamina’s own posts may illustrate the point: her post about the unacceptability of killing children on either side of the border prompted a wave of sharp criticism from antiwar Russians living abroad.)

Galyamina acknowledges that the arsenal of collective political action in today’s Russia is “limited.” But it still exists — Russians retain the ability to “express their political identity without directly clashing over the topic of the war.”

“If by politics we mean working together for the common good, then all sorts of things fall under that. You can unite around values like opposing violence, protecting the environment, or fostering intellectual development,” Galyamina says, adding as a caveat: “That doesn’t mean the only people there will be ones with antiwar views.”

As an example, Galyamina cites a recent trip to the village of Yeski in the Tver region, where she met volunteers with all kinds of political views, all working toward the same goal — helping the “Conservation” project prepare for the restoration of the local Church of the Epiphany, where 19th-century murals are set to be restored.

The word “activism” itself has become toxic in today’s Russia, Danilova concludes: “For example, people who protect the environment, cultural heritage, or animals today extremely rarely call themselves activists. They’re more likely to say “I volunteer,” “I help out sometimes,” or “I’m interested in this.”” They’re afraid to call themselves activists outright, so as not to draw unwanted attention.

‘Lots of “foreign agents,” current and future’

“People sit in the kitchen, eat pilaf. They drink wine, talk. Pet the cat. Then they move to the living room and put on a movie with a projector,” says Boris (name changed for safety reasons), a philologist and YouTuber, describing evenings at a Moscow apartment where the owner runs a home film club.

Usually about 15 people gather — journalists, lawyers, human rights activists, film school students, and musicians of all ages — and they barely fit in the small kitchen.

According to Boris, in his acquaintance’s apartment you can find “lots of ‘foreign agents,’ current and future.”

People get into the screenings by invitation only. The first time Boris found himself in the apartment, he couldn’t shake the parallels with the Soviet dissident movement:

The films participants watch are often “socially significant in nature.” One evening they discussed Pavel Talankin’s much-talked-about film Mr. Nobody Against Putin. Another time, an independent journalist showed his own documentary about a Russian contract soldier who went off to fight in the war against Ukraine.

Strictly speaking, a film about a contract soldier who says he’s fighting for the money isn’t an antiwar statement, Boris reasons. But what the subject says still points to the conclusion that this is “not at all the people’s war that propaganda tries to present it as to the public”:

Still, these evenings are far from always devoted to “social topics,” Boris says. The club is “just a gathering of people who have something to talk about and who want to visit each other.” “Nothing illegal happens” there, Boris reasons, and he’s “never once heard any serious sedition” that might draw “some kind of interest from the authorities.”

That’s not because the guests lack such thoughts, he says, but because the people there already understand each other: “The most seditious thoughts, it seems to me, are these loud, declarative manifestos… But when you’re among your own, you somehow don’t feel the need for them.”

‘We don’t announce events, we invite people only in person’

After leaving Russia, politician and former Moscow State University instructor Mikhail Lobanov said private film clubs, where antiwar-minded participants gather, have sprung up across Russia.

But discussion venues aren’t limited to people’s homes, he says — they also persist within universities. “These kinds of projects keep operating, just in a safer mode, in a non-public space,” Lobanov explains.

Veronika Danilova says one of the conditions that has kept civil society alive in wartime Russia is the shift of initiatives into non-public spaces: “More and more activities are going underground or semi-underground — that is, they’re effectively invisible from the outside.”

The authors of the Arendt Labs study quote one Russian activist they managed to interview (the study doesn’t specify her field of activity):

“It’s clear that what we used to see — movements like FBK [the Navalny-founded anti-corruption organization] — have become extremely unsafe,” Danilova says. But that doesn’t mean people who remain in Russia, whether by choice or because they have no way to leave, are disengaging from civil society altogether and becoming “either a neutral mass or pro-Putin.”

The number of politically active people, especially the young, in major cities “hasn’t dropped much,” Lobanov believes. That, he says, is what led to the “Radical Democracy” project, aimed at “the emergence of a strong political force on the democratic flank.”

Galyamina adds that independent book and philosophy clubs are operating in Russian cities, and that exhibitions and theatrical productions are being staged, some not even in theaters — one, for example, took place in a parking lot.

Some events and institutions are easy to get into and operate openly; word of mouth spreads information about others. “How does it all work here? Like this: there’s one facade, and life underneath is different,” Galyamina says.

Authorities have been continuously ramping up pressure since 2022, but civic activity persists regardless, Danilova says: “People are simply looking for safe forms of participation and are flocking to them.”

This will keep happening, she’s confident — Russians will keep finding new ways to interact: “It’ll be harder for outside observers to pick up on from the outside. But that doesn’t mean it will all disappear.”

‘There’s caution in actions and words. There’s no fear’

“From outside, life in Russia looks like some kind of black hell. In reality, there’s a great deal of life here,” Yulia Galyamina is convinced. “Someone less optimistic will tell you that everything is awful. Because it’s true: a lot of it is awful. There’s no gas, no internet, everyone’s fed up. But on the other hand — people come together, talk to each other, do things together.”

Galyamina believes important shifts in public mood have taken place over the past year and a half to two years: “The emotion of fear has given way to something more like irritation and a feeling of ‘being fed up with everything.’” And finally, plenty of people are willing to talk about how “fed up” they are — so people freely complain to each other about the internet, gas, and prices:

“Almost everyone speaks negatively about the current government, about prices, gas shortages, and internet blocking, and actively shares local problems in their area,” confirms Pyotr, the activist, who is close to one of the regional election campaigns and talks often with residents and volunteers.

Pyotr adds: “It’s very obvious that people are deeply tired of staying silent and being afraid.”

* * *

Over the course of the war, each person Bereg spoke to has developed their own approach to dealing with neighbors, coworkers, and acquaintances.

Oleg, from the Moscow region, who woke up in June 2026 to a Ukrainian drone attack, tries not to step outside his own bubble: “I don’t really talk to many people [right now]. I’ve sort of sealed myself off in my own little world,” he says. “It’s not interesting to talk now — with the elephant in the room. It ends up feeling awkward somehow.”

People with opposing views, Oleg believes, are “someone you need to protect yourself from.”

Natalya, the instructor from Vladimir, and Yulia, the Moscow resident in the entertainment industry, have both given up looking for like-minded people or new friends.

“I don’t plan to do anything about it. It was the same way in Soviet times, so for people my age it’s nothing surprising. I have a few people I’m on the same wavelength with. I know how to be selective about who I talk to,” Yulia says. She avoids risky, dangerous conversations to “protect herself for the sake of her children.”

The trial and prison have turned upside down the life of Yevtushenko, who used to be open to the world. “In my conversations with Kolya, I went along with his topics simply because I couldn’t do otherwise, even when I didn’t want to talk about it,” she later wrote from prison. “Excessive suggestibility and the desire to please others needed to either be controlled or rooted out entirely.”

Now Polina believes that “you don’t always need to be nice to everyone,” and that with some people you shouldn’t be at all, “for the sake of your own good and your own freedom.” “You shouldn’t try to be good to everyone. There are people who take advantage of that for their own ends,” Yevtushenko concludes.

Some people are looking for a way out of isolation by finding at least some common ground with their ideological opponents. Lobanov’s former colleagues who stayed in Russia to teach have told him that by the third or fourth year of the full-scale war, a “kind of mutual adjustment” had taken place at universities between supporters and opponents of the war: “Over time, a sense emerged that this is all going to last a very long time, and that everyone is, in some sense, in the same boat.”

Those who keep doing local activism — activism they’re so afraid to call by that name — are making new friends. Volunteers tell Taisiya, the tour guide, about “frightening times, general depression, and despair,” always adding: “But look at the people we’ve met!”

“Going out on the street feels a little scary, sort of. But there’s usually more support than not — from young people and older ones alike. Someone always stops and says: oh, I know ‘Last Address,’ you’re heroes! Thank you… And that’s inspiring,” Taisiya says.

Politician Yulia Galyamina hasn’t lost her optimism either. “People believe in Russia, they believe in its future,” Galyamina is confident. “Because otherwise, why restore a church?”

Pyotr, the activist, says he’s “very lucky”: he has “a wonderful girlfriend, friends, and parents who also don’t support everything that’s happening right now.”

“I still believe this clusterfuck will end, and the beautiful Russia of the future will inevitably arrive,” Pyotr says. “There’s caution in actions and words, but there’s no fear. I’d even say I’m afraid of fear itself, since it paralyzes any productive action.”