Talk:Anti-war protests in Russia (2022–present)

Merge into Protests against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine
I don't see the need of this article. It's the same topic as Protests against the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, just that in Russia. We don't need an article exclusively for the protests in Russia. Useful information should be copied into Russia's section in the page and this article should remain a redirect. Super  Ψ   Dro  22:42, 24 February 2022 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure the merge is needed. The scope of this page is restricted to protest within Russia itself, which is clearly subject to different pressures than protests elsewhere in the world. I also imagine the page will grow, and there is a similar page 2014 anti-war protests in Russia. If a merge is made, information from the page should first be taken and integrated into the Russian section of the more general page. Dsp13 (talk) 22:44, 24 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose for now. Things may well develop, let's wait and see for a bit. --Pokelova (talk) 06:29, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose There's an article on the 2014 protests, while this time it just started, hence not many info, but chances are this event is gonna unfold rapidly in days to come.Tame (talk) 07:06, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * That things have just started should be an argument for the move, as we don't know if this page will be long enough as to need its own page or if it should just be fit into the proposed target. There's also not an international article for protests on 2014. Super   Ψ   Dro  08:41, 25 February 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose for now. Seconding Pokelova, I'd give it at least a week to develop first. --Cdjp1 (talk) 11:56, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. This should become an article like Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. It's an article about Russian society specifically. twsabin 19:15, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. The content of this article is prose that describes both social media/newspaper protests as well as street protests in the context of the internal Russian democratic movement, in the broad sense. The world-wide protest page is (currently) mostly just a list of protest locations, which will quite likely expand into prose overviews and interpretations of the protests by WP:RS, but differs from the issue of internal Russian pro-democracy/human rights organising. There's some overlap between the two, but there's currently no justification for a merge. Boud (talk) 22:22, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. I think we should wait for the situation to play out. As Boud says, the world-wide protest page is just a list of protest locations for the most part. There's no need to merge this article into another when 99% of the original article will be left out. Fijipedia (talk) 02:02, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. We should see how the situation develops in about a week or so. ThatAlternateHistoryLag5 (talk) 10:15, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose for now. Given the uncertainty of the crisis, it's unknown how long it will last and if further protests in Russia will continue. However, I support renaming the article. Anti-war protests isn't specific enough to the protests' goals, which is against the Russian government in its invasion. Callmemirela  &#127809; talk 16:20, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Strong oppose There's an article on the 2014 protests--Panam2014 (talk) 17:43, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose for now. I think the mere fact that protests are happening in Russia is notable. P1221 (talk) 20:19, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose, notable on its on. Protests have not dwindled. Mellk (talk) 05:09, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

Why does "Communist Party of the Russian Federation" keep appearing on the side of the protests??
All you need to do is check their website (https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/). All of their top leaders are strongly pro-war/pro-invasion of Ukraine. A few Communist MP's speaking out against the war is not the same as the party being against it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Julevin1 (talk • contribs) 23:33, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I've tried removing it a couple times explaining this because few MPs opposing it does not mean this is the party's official position. Zyuganov issued his statement supporting it, that is the official position, and we've seen how they voted today. Mellk (talk) 10:15, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Looking at their website, they've even put out this statement in English that seems like pretty unambiguous support for the invasion: "'By this letter the International Department of the CC of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is bringing to your knowledge the position of the CPRF concerning the February 24 decision of the Russian Federation on conducting a special operation in Ukraine aimed at protecting the population of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, demilitarizing and denazifying the country which has become a source of constant aggression, nationalism and Russophobia... The situation called for emergency measures to liberate the country from the Bandera dictatorship, but these measures could not be implemented by the Ukrainian people because the country’s civilian population was simply unable to stand up to the forces of terror, which were armed to the teeth, and needed help... The need to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine in order to stop it becoming a hotbed of Nazi ideology should become the main concern of the world community in order to prevent the country from turning into a Nazi state, a bridgehead of the aggressive imperialist USA-NATO alliance spearheaded against Eurasian countries.'" NHCLS (talk) 16:06, 4 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Yes, this should be regarded as the official position - pro-war. Mellk (talk) 23:31, 7 March 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 21:22, 9 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Russia's anti-war flag is held by a man.jpg

Wikipedia editor arrested for violating Russian law
"Prominent editor of Russian Wikipedia pages detained in Belarus," Yahoo.

"Authorities in Belarus have arrested and detained ... one of the top editors of Russian Wikipedia.... Bernstein was reportedly accused of violating the "fake news" law Russia passed in early March by editing the Wikipedia article about the invasion of Ukraine. Under the new law, anybody found guilty of what the country deems as false information about the Ukraine invasion — remember, the Kremlin calls it a "special military operation" — could be imprisoned for up to 15 years." --2603:7000:2143:8500:19EE:D8B5:8A85:4329 (talk) 06:16, 14 March 2022 (UTC)


 * This is noteworthy but doesn't make much sense to me. How is it a person resident in Belarus (seemingly) is subject to Russian laws? Did he violate the law while in Russia and moving to a safe country thereafter? I think we need more info before adding, in any event. Solipsism 101 (talk) 15:00, 15 March 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Mark Bernstein (Wikimedian) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 18:22, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Related organization: Anti-war Committee of Russia
A draft of Anti-War Committee of Russia was recently created that might be related to the content of this article. Although the English language draft is rather short, the corresponding page on Ru.WP appears to have significantly more content. has requested help with the draft from any editors able to assist. --N8 13:13, 18 March 2022 (UTC)

White-blue-white flag
Hi, two weeks ago the artice White-blue-white flag was AfD'ed with the outcome of "Merging" it into this article until notability as a separate topic could be demonstrated. At that time the article wasn't well sourced and had only one source discussing it in detail. However, in the past days I have added a handful of WP:RS, including several discussing the topic in quite some depth, not just in passing mention. There were also other changes and I think it looks much better now.

In my opinion, the reliable sources now indicate sustained notability quite a bit above our threshold for notability per WP:GNG, so that it makes sense to keep the article and further develop the topic as a stand-alone topic.

Also, this article is at 165 KB at present and therefore slowly approaching reasonable size limits so that we should start to think about identifying sub-topics which could be split out into separate articles instead of merging even more into here. See Talk:White-blue-white flag. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 14:39, 23 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Strongly oppose merge. The article is not adapted to be merged into it, there are sources, the flag is not used only in Russia and there are no consensus for merge.--Panam2014 (talk) 11:21, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge. The flag has also been used widely in anti-war protests outside Russia, for example in Berlin, Germany by Russian exiles (9:46–10:24), as observed by Deutsche Welle. It wouldn't fit in an article that only talks about the protests inside Russia. Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 14:48, 25 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Strongly oppose merge its use is well documented enough to deserve a separate article. --Spafky (talk) 13:39, 26 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge per above and per OP. The AfD was premature and highly flawed - looking at the !votes, there was never a consensus for merging, that was a decision that the closer made by themselves. There were more keep !votes than merge, delete, or draftify, and the closer saying that the keep !voters had "weak" arguments when many of said arguments appealed to WP:GNG and the international RS coverage is hard to defend. If it closed as anything other than "keep" it should've been "no consensus" in which case the default thing to do is to keep the article. The "merge result" should be disregarded, I don't think we even need a deletion discussion review unless we want to remove the templates claiming "This article was nominated for deletion on 10 March 2022. The result of the discussion was merge" from the talk page.  Vanilla  Wizard  💙 03:32, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment. I would have read "Keep" or "No consensus" as well from the old discussion, but I can also see how the closer derived at "Merge" from that old discussion based on a still weakly sourced article. Trying to avoid wasting resources through unnecessary bureaucracy I think we don't need a deletion review or a new AfD, as the article has considerably changed and has a lot of WP:SIGCOV references now and the outcome of this new discussion on the current article (and the parallel one on the article's talk page) is obvious.
 * The discussion has been up for more than a week now and therefore could be closed. However, since I started this discussion and added many refs I am involved now, so someone uninvolved will have to formally close this discussion and update the various tags, so that we can all move on working on content rather than spending time on formalisms. --Matthiaspaul (talk) 09:21, 31 March 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose merge per the reasonings of previous contributors. UlyssorZebra (talk) 21:33, 2 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose merge per discussion above. ARK (talk) 09:12, 3 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Comment. A new AfD is now happening for the community to comment on: Articles_for_deletion/White-blue-white_flag_(2nd_nomination)
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 06:26, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Transliteration of Нет войне
I think we need to get a consensus here. Every time I check the page it's something different, and it pains me to see that people keep trying to change it back to "net voyne". This is wrong for so many reasons.

Нет:

Google Translate will have you thinking it's "Net voyne" - this is very incorrect. It's "nyet" (less commonly you could transliterate it to "niet" or "njet"), but it's definitely not "net". The only way one could arrive at "net" is by very literally going letter-by-letter and knowing that н = n, е = e, т = t, but this is imprecise. "Nyet" is already a very recognizable transliteration for the Russian word for "no", it's the one you'll see in most English language dictionaries. You'll have no luck finding "Russian word for 'no'" if you search for "net" on the other hand.

Войне:

I've seen it both ways before (voynye and voyne) so I'm not as bothered by this one, but it's pronounced voynye and it should be transliterated to voynye too. If we really wanted to, we could write it as vojnye because Russian's Й is typically transliterated to J (differentiating it from Ы which is typically transliterated to Y), but I've not seen it written as vojnye in secondaries so I'm fine with voynye.

My preference is as follows: Nyet voynye > Nyet vojnye > Nyet voyne > Net voyne. Please, at least don't write it "net".

 Vanilla  Wizard  💙 20:40, 29 March 2022 (UTC)


 * It is written more commonly as "net voyne" than "nyet voynye". The former is spelled like this in RS and returns many thousands of results on Google, for example, while the latter returns only 300 results and I don't see any RS spell it as "nyet voynye". Recognizable names should be used. Similar to Khuy Voyne! I guess. Transliteration rules are that "е" is transliterated to "e" after consonant (WP:RUS). But I think english-language sources almost always use "no to war" instead, so I think that should be used. Mellk (talk) 01:00, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * This source (page 18) seems to suggest that multiple forms are possible: niet, nyet, njet, n'et (perhaps with an apostrophe added) - if so, we should use the form most commonly used in WP:RS or suggested by WP:RUS for consistency (and possibly add a footnote giving more detailed explanations on other transliteration variants).
 * In the section header we could avoid the problem by using the translation "No to war!" instead, but we would still have to choose a transliteration in the prose, which would obviously have to mention the original Cyrillic slogan Нет войне! together with its transliteration.
 * --Matthiaspaul (talk) 10:57, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
 * I'd prefer any of those forms (Niet, Nyet, Njet, N'et) to simply "Net", but nyet is by far the most common and recognizable transliteration (not just in reference to this slogan, but in any Russian → English transliteration). I agree that English language sources almost always simply write "no to war" with no transliteration, but I disagree with Mel1k that "net voyne" is what RS use. No matter which transliteration I search, most of the results are unreliable and/or UGC, but I did find CNN for example using Nyet voine Transliteration rules are that "е" is transliterated to "e" after consonant isn't entirely accurate, there are exceptions to this after certain consonants and in certain words. The Wikipedia page Ye (Cyrillic) does a better job at explaining this than the essay WP:RUS in my opinion. Nyet is an example of a word that doesn't match this rule, and it's almost without exception that nyet is the only transliteration of нет you'll ever see in English. If we are to use what's most common, we shouldn't even consider using "net." I'll concede that it's much harder to say the same about voyne, I'm not sure that there even is a most common transliteration of войне.
 * Would it be agreeable to insist on using No to war! in as many instances as possible, but use "nyet voyne" as the primary transliteration?  Vanilla </b><b style="background-color:#749;color:#FFF"> Wizard </b></b> 💙 01:37, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
 * That solution works. But transliteration is not supposed to reflect accurate pronunciation. The letter "г" for example is sometimes pronounced like a v (such as in "-ого"/"-его" endings or certain words like "сегодня") or other sounds (like in "бог") but it is still always transliterated as "g". Mellk (talk) 06:44, 31 March 2022 (UTC)

Monarchist Party of Russia
Does the Monarchist party of Russia participate in or care about the protests? If so, what side are they on? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.127.13.54 (talk) 21:57, 2 April 2022 (UTC)


 * I should have not asked this stupid, nonsensical question. Please do not reply to this stupid question. What I asked here is nonsense. I am so dumb. 86.127.13.54 (talk) 02:58, 15 June 2022 (UTC)

Lead figures
Previously the lead figures in the infobox included certain people such as Ivashov, Ovsyannikova and "sympathizers" but I find those inclusions weak. Mostly it was either no sources or sources showing them simply criticising the war. But either way I do not think that it makes them "lead figures" of the protests. I have left Navalny due to his status as opposition leader and his repeated calls for protests with his allies helping to organise. Perhaps it could changed to something like "no centralised leadership" such as in 2022 Kazakh unrest if a source supporting this could be found. Mellk (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2022 (UTC)


 * No centralised leadership is what I've seen reflected in sources. There's some sources already being used on the page that mention there's no coordinating bodies and that the protests have mostly been ad-hoc and spread through personal networks. NHCLS (talk) 09:23, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately I don't think the Guardian source can be used in this case per WP:RSEDITORIAL as it is an opinion piece. I am not sure about openDemocracy. Mellk (talk) 01:26, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Since the Guardian source is written by an academia from New York University, WP:RSEDITORIAL does say that "opinions of specialists and recognized experts are more likely to be reliable and to reflect a significant viewpoint." But here's some other sources I've found that seem to indicate a decentralised nature: 1, 2, 3, 4. NHCLS (talk) 07:22, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
 * Those are useful links, thanks. Mellk (talk) 08:16, 20 April 2022 (UTC)


 * Most of the "lead figures" listed on both sides of the infobox do not play significant roles in either leading or suppressing the protests, and should be removed. Lightspecs (talk) 02:40, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

far-right and neo-nazi groups
some people keep re-adding far-right and neo nazi groups to the infobox as part of the opposition, as far as i can see, only the right bloc one makes sense, the other ones are just random people sabotaging stuff, or random vague letters calling for violence without saying much, it also doesn't mention any participation or support to anti-war protests as far as i can see, and, pushing far-right groups into either side could be just disinformation/propaganda, because simply remotely saying "war bad" doesn't mean you're taking part in protests or doing some action against the war.

again, we shouldn't include every single group that has said anything remotely in relation to the war, or else we might as well include new people and others in the opposition part. 187.39.133.201 (talk) 16:34, 22 July 2022 (UTC)
 * ill also ask you to review my edit, and see the fact that i didn't remove everything, i simply removed what didn't really make sense. 187.39.133.201 (talk) 16:35, 22 July 2022 (UTC)

Direct action
While this article mentions some of the direct action taken against the war, there is a lot more to cover like the large amount of railroad sabotage and arson against military targets committed by BOAK and other groups. Should a new article be created for the domestic direct action in Russia or simply have the "direct action" section expanded? Personally Im leaning towards the former but what do you all think? Glakes (talk) 20:43, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * I have not seen much English-language media coverage on this. Mellk (talk) 20:49, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * There is a mix of English and Russian-language media while not much does imo warrant at least a mention, including in some of the sources I provided, and I can probably find more given a search Glakes (talk) 21:01, 18 August 2022 (UTC)
 * LibCom have been releasing regular updates, with a focus towards anarchist actions. NHCLS (talk) 07:23, 19 August 2022 (UTC)

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion
The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion: Participate in the deletion discussion at the. —Community Tech bot (talk) 11:22, 27 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Flag of the Revolutionary Workers' Party.svg

Opposition flag
Why is that Russian opposition flag used in the infobox? Have those figures all identified themselves with it? I seriously doubt Akhmed Zakayev identifies himself with this flag. Or Aleksei Navalny, who is an imperialist nationalist by any non-ethnic Russian standards, with his history of supporting aggression against Georgia, calling them грызуны and what not, marching in Moscow with guys wearing Я русский shirts, etc. Archives of his livejournal never fail to deliver. I mean, this is still up on his channel. Synotia (talk) 15:57, 17 January 2023 (UTC)


 * And what about Ovsyannikova? She worked for the propaganda for years?? Besides that sign, what has she done? Synotia (talk) 16:15, 17 January 2023 (UTC)

Orphaned references in 2022 anti-war protests in Russia
I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of 2022 anti-war protests in Russia's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "reuters":<ul> <li>From Nord Stream 2: </li> <li>From Boris Bondarev: </li> <li>From Malaysia Airlines Flight 17: </li> <li>From Chasiv Yar missile strike: </li> <li>From Akhmed Zakayev: </li> <li>From 2020s in political history: </li> <li>From International sanctions during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: </li> <li>From International sanctions during the Russo-Ukrainian War: </li> <li>From 2022 boycott of Russia and Belarus: </li> <li>From Gazprom: "Gazprom, Eni plan big gas pipeline bypassing Turkey." Reuters 23 June 2007 Accessed 26 June 2007.</li> <li>From 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine: </li> <li>From Lukoil: </li> <li>From Alexei Navalny 2018 presidential campaign: Kremlin critic Navalny can't run for presidency - election official. Reuters. Published 3 May 2017. Retrieved 3 May 2017.</li> <li>From War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: </li> <li>From Yekaterina Samutsevich: </li> <li>From United Nations Human Rights Council: "U.N. chief tells rights body drop rhetoric, blocs", Reuters, 12 December 2008.</li> </ul>

Reference named "yahoo":<ul> <li>From War crimes in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine: </li> <li>From Battles of Bohorodychne and Krasnopillia: </li> <li>From NAFO (group): </li> <li>From Akhmed Zakayev: </li> <li>From Russo-Ukrainian War: </li> <li>From Southern Ukraine campaign: </li> <li>From Russian occupation of Kherson Oblast: Ukrainska Pravda (27 Jul 2022) Video from Antonivka Road Bridge in Kherson shows extensive damage</li> </ul>

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT ⚡ 07:03, 18 January 2023 (UTC)

The "Statements against the war" part seem to be full of error.
There seem to be many error on that part.On the upper part they said that only two State Duma deputies from KPRF have spoken out against the war,but in the other part they said

"However, one of the New People deputies of the State Duma, Sangadji Tarbaev, has publicly condemned the war. Valery Gartung, also a State Duma deputy and a member of A Just Russia — For Truth party (which supports the invasion), also denounced it in Facebook, and later commented his post to Republic.ru."

Also,that part also said Vyacheslav Markhayev is a senator while he is actually a State Duma member. AnonymousAsian2378 (talk) 08:32, 19 August 2023 (UTC)