Introduction

War and repression have radically altered the landscape of civic activism and resistance in Russia. Already weakened by years of gradually escalating restrictions and the state’s increasing willingness to use violence against its perceived opponents, many from the beleaguered community of Russians who stubbornly claim the mantle of civil society now find themselves in exile, while the remainder, whose size and composition are unknown, attempt to operate under the radar within Russia itself. At the same time, dramatic shifts in foreign donors’ political perspectives and funding priorities, such as those ushered in by the second administration of US President Donald Trump in early 2025, have made the position of Russia’s exiled civil society still more precarious.

Even before the funding crisis, the seeming transatlantic consensus on the importance of supporting Russian democratic and antiwar activism masked a deeper debate. On the one hand, proponents of such funding have argued that Russian human rights organizations, media projects, educational initiatives, and other civil society endeavors offer an important lifeline to citizens who might eventually be able to build a different and more peaceable Russia, while also providing democratic governments with valuable insight into events on the ground in an increasingly opaque and adversarial country. On the other hand, opponents argue that because the political and ideological deck is so heavily stacked against the prospect of Russian democratization, all such initiatives represent little more than a fool’s errand, and the money could be more effectively deployed elsewhere.

It is this debate that CEPA set out to address in an extensive research project examining the ability of exiled or semi-exiled Russian civil society groups to engage with and affect developments inside Russia. We sought to understand what forms of impact are still possible, what challenges and risks such groups face, and what international stakeholders can do to help this form of democratic resistance succeed. 

The three reports in the series focus primarily on organized civil society groups, intentionally leaving out political groups and politicians, as well as ad hoc, post-2022 local initiatives. For example, in the human rights domain, the report examines nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and projects that specialize in the defense of particular persecuted groups (such as political prisoners), advocacy for certain groups (such as Indigenous people), or environmental activism. In the domain of education, we assess new educational initiatives launched by academics in exile. The report on the media sector analyzes a range of independent media projects, including general-interest news outlets like TV Rain or Meduza, subject-based outlets, and those serving certain regions of Russia. Most of these organizations have found themselves in exile, facing challenges familiar to many diasporas. Yet this distinct Russian case of multisectoral emigration among civil society groups is driven by a political agenda stemming from the Kremlin’s war of aggression in Ukraine and a related authoritarian crackdown. Therefore, most of the groups in question remain oriented toward domestic audiences with the aim of advancing human rights, freedom of information, and critical thinking.

Repression in Russia 

Skepticism about the extent of exiled civil society groups’ impact inside Russia is understandable. Together with its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has dramatically increased the level of repression at home, replacing an older order that, while certainly hostile to dissent, had tolerated some forms of autonomous action and independent media. By reconfiguring the legal boundaries and enforcing its restrictions with an unprecedented degree of intensity, the regime has effectively criminalized many perceived opponents, pushed others into exile, and incentivized the rest of society to remain silent.

The shift to wartime repression has featured a sharp rise in the use of long-standing legal tools against civil society, particularly the laws on “foreign agents,” “undesirable organizations,” and “terrorism and extremism.” Since early 2022, the government has radically increased the number of “foreign agent” designations (see Figure 1), which carry severe administrative and legal consequences, restricting designees’ ability to pursue their professional lives, earn an income, and participate in public debate. 

Simultaneously, there has been a nearly fourfold increase in the number of designated “undesirable organizations.” 

Simultaneously, there has been nearly a fourfold increase in the number of designated “undesirable organizations.” The label terminates the legal operations of such organizations in Russia and can lead to criminal prosecution for anyone who works for them, as well as, administrative liability for people who “cooperate” with them or “disseminate” their information (see Figure 2).

Particularly since 2024, the Kremlin has expanded its discriminatory use of the “terrorist and extremist” list and added organizations from the human rights sector. In the most notable case, in April, 2026, a Russian court imposed the “extremist” designation on the human rights group, Memorial, which recieved the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 and was one of Russia’s oldest Human rights groups.¹ OVD-Info, a human rights watchdog and a key aggregator of related data, was similarly declared “extremist” in June 2026. Such designations lead to de facto bans on any activity by the groups in Russia, threatening their supporters with severe criminal penalties.

Alongside these tools, the Kremlin has cracked down directly on dissenting speech since 2022, when the Russian parliament amended the criminal code to introduce harsh penalties for the expression of antiwar views (“false information” about or the “discrediting” of the Russian armed forces), leading to a sharp increase in politically motivated criminal cases in 2022-24 with prewar levels (see Figure 3).

This level of repression, deployed arbitrarily across different sectors of civil society, was designed to produce a profound chilling effect. The Kremlin has reinforced its deterrents by offering “positive” incentives to conform, such as increased financial support for government-organized NGOs (GONGOs) in the human rights domain, for propaganda outlets in the media sector, and for state-sponsored social media platforms like Max or VK Video. The result is an operational environment for civil society that is very different from the pre-2022 landscape, raising the question of whether there is any room left for meaningful civic and prodemocratic activity. 

What We Found

Our reports demonstrate that Russian civil society groups remain a significant force with a substantial audience in Russia. Their ability to impact government policy has been further reduced under wartime conditions, but their engagement with the Russian public is still strong, and they have effectively sustained an independent informational and educational space that serves as an alternative to state propaganda and indoctrination. Moreover, civil society groups have become a critical bastion for maintaining horizontal ties, strengthening solidarity, and fostering a sense of community for an increasingly atomized and oppressed Russian population.

We show that preserving the ability to engage meaningfully with audiences in Russia has required significant adjustments to civil society groups’ modes of operation and programming. Many organizations have relocated their operations partly or entirely outside the country to ensure the safety of their personnel and their capacity to produce independent content and offer services. As a result, civil society groups tend to operate in a hybrid mode, balancing between exile-based hubs and in-country service delivery. In addition, groups like media organizations and educational projects have had to make circumstantial decisions to move to new online platforms or virtual classrooms. 

In the domain of human rights activism, we show that civil society organizations remain capable of assisting people in need, including military draftees. We also demonstrate, however, that the key priority for these organizations has shifted toward maintaining civic infrastructure and the ties between people. This shift is premised on reducing the high-profile, high-risk political dimensions of their work and building networks of autonomous civil society cells. 

Our report on education shows that dissenting Russian academics have managed to launch a number of educational projects in exile. Projects that offer virtual education have demonstrated consistent demand, with thousands of students enrolled, reflecting an appetite for uncensored classroom discussion among audiences in Russia. While enrollment figures are not comparable to those of the national student body inside Russia, the independent projects help to sustain viable alternatives to state-censored education for younger generations.

The report on media projects finds that independent Russian outlets are still capable of shaping the information space inside the country. We assess that, despite government restrictions, the reach of independent media ranges from 6–8m monthly viewers to more than 20m around major events, when news consumers actively seek out uncensored information. Our report also finds that multiple exiled Russian outlets operate within an information ecosystem based on a complementarity principle, whereby general-interest media amplify exclusive material from more specialized outlets, such as investigative journalism projects. 

Learning Lessons

Modern Russians, of course, are not the first community of political exiles in the world. During the second half of the last century, émigrés from Soviet-occupied countries in Central and Eastern Europe worked for generations to support alternate visions for the future of their states. More recently, Iranian, Syrian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Burmese, and other civil societies in exile have found themselves in circumstances similar to those of today’s Russian organizations. Unfortunately, the lessons, both positive and negative, learned by other communities have not easily traveled, and most of the Russian activists contacted for this project were broadly unaware of the experiences of other diasporas.

The lack of knowledge transfer is unfortunate but understandable; Russian exiles have been primarily occupied with trying to maintain and reconstruct an ecosystem of independent activism amid rapid and encompassing upheaval. And while some Central European and Baltic activists returned from exile after 1989 to play important roles in their countries’ political transitions, that is the exception rather than the rule. Most exile communities have tended to become increasingly insular and self-referential, gradually losing touch with and relevance to developments on the ground in their homelands. Their isolation is deepened by the growing propensity of authoritarian regimes to engage in transnational repression, deploying intelligence agencies and criminal networks to monitor, harass, intimidate, kidnap, and murder political opponents, activists, and ordinary citizens living abroad. Such pressure can push exiles into “safer,” less overtly challenging forms of activism, and it discourages constituents in the home country from engaging with activists overseas.

It is especially troubling that democratic governments and donors have often played an important—if unintentional—role in widening the gap between exiled civil society and their constituencies at home. Funding and coordination mechanisms, such as the Russia Platform recently launched by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, could serve as an important opportunity to convene disparate interests, but because they are limited in scope and resourcing, they frequently encourage exile organizations to compete for legitimacy. And because support is predicated on the ability of Russian organizations to build goodwill among foreign political establishments and societies, the groups seeking funding often find themselves forced to frame their efforts in a language that further separates them from Russians in Russia. 

If Russian civil society in exile is to overcome those challenges and maintain relevance in Russia itself, donors will need to change their own emphasis. They should, for example, take a different view of what constitutes impact, recognizing that political change on the ground in the near term is likely impossible, and that maintaining connection and helping ordinary Russians to overcome the isolation imposed on them by the Kremlin is an important impact in itself. The goal is not so much to create change or to make it inevitable, but simply to ensure that it remains possible. Moreover, donors will need to shift from supporting those who speak in a language most easily digested by audiences in their own countries to supporting those who, while holding fast to democratic and antiwar values, are best positioned to translate those values into tangible engagement with activists and ordinary citizens on the ground in an increasingly oppressive Russia.

About the Authors

Sam Greene

Prof. Sam Greene is a Nonresident Senior Fellow for the Democratic Resilience program at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA) and Professor of Russian Politics at King’s College London (KCL).

Sam served as Director of CEPA’s Democratic Resilience Program from 2022 to 2025. Before that, Sam founded the Russia Institute at KCL, which he directed from 2012 to 2022. Before moving to London, he lived and worked for 13 years in Moscow, including as Director of the Center for the Study of New Media and Politics at the New Economic School and as Deputy Director of the Carnegie Moscow Center. He is the author of Moscow in Movement: Power & Politics in Putin’s Russia (Stanford, 2014) and Putin v. the People: The Perilous Politics of a Divided Russia (Yale, 2019, with Graeme Robertson), as well as numerous academic and policy papers. An American and British citizen, Dr. Greene holds a PhD and MSc from the London School of Economics and a BSJ from Northwestern University and is an elected fellow of the British Academy of Social Sciences.

Evgeny Roshchin

Dr. Evgeny Roshchin leads the Democratic Resilience program at CEPA and serves as a Visiting Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He is the author of “Professorial Silence”, “Exit as Voice”, “Crime and Punishment in International Politics” and many other academic articles, and media commentaries.

CEPA is a nonpartisan, nonprofit, public policy institution. All opinions expressed are those of the author(s) alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.

1. Amnesty International. “Russia: ‘Extremist’ Label and Ban of Nobel Prize Winner Memorial Criminalizes Human Rights Work.” Amnesty International, April 9, 2026. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/04/russia-extremist-label-and-ban-of-nobel-prize-winner-memorial-criminalizes-human-rights-work/. [↩]