Exclusive: Inside Russia’s Anti-War Underground
Zarina Zabrisky | Jun 12, 2026
“Hatred toward Myself”Katya agrees to an interview online, with only a part of her face visible, covered by a hoodie and a COVID-style mask. The connection is weak and the camera is shaky. Katya is not her real name. She requested that her real name and location not be published, for security concerns. She could be anywhere in the Russian Federation. The dark room looks like a basement. Her friend behind the camera is guarding the door. If someone enters, they may be arrested.
Katya is a Russian partisan, but she shrugs and hesitates to call herself that, “Who needs labels now? We need action.”
Action in Putin’s Russia means lethal danger and extreme secrecy but Katya is convinced: Only active resistance could change the regime. And the regime must go, she and her friends believe.
Katya is one voice in a small but persistent anti-war underground that has emerged inside Russia since the invasion of Ukraine. Repeated incidents of rail damage, fires and other acts of sabotage are reported.
Katya was not always a Russian resistance fighter. She was not into politics and did not think much about the Russian war in Ukraine, or, as it was labeled “SVO” (“a special military operation”) Putin’s euphemism for the war of aggression the Russian Federation started on February 24, 2022. The war or SVO, it did not affect her, and, like most of her friends and relatives, she did not follow it closely.
“Somewhere on TV, there was some war happening to someone else,” she said. “I had my own life, ordinary daily stuff.”
That changed in 2022, as Putin’s government started a mobilization drive. Her boyfriend was sent to the front, to the “special military operation.” Next, he went missing in action. Later, a close friend was mobilized. The war entered her life. Instead of “getting married and having kids,” she faced emptiness.
“It was hard,” she said. “I felt pain, fear, hatred toward the system. Hatred toward this president.”
She hesitated.
“Hatred toward myself.”
And this was a paradigm shift for Katya. In order not to hate herself, she joined the resistance. Now, she fights Putin’s regime.
“I do not want to die for someone else’s interests,” she said. “Instead of building families, living our lives, raising children, we are expected to die for someone’s unclear interests that I do not share and do not support… the state treats its citizens as expendable material.”
The reports of Russian forces committing atrocities in Bucha in 2022 shook Katya. Western governments and international investigators have described them as war crimes. Moscow has denied responsibility for civilian killings in Bucha. She was mortified and angry.
“I am ashamed that my fellow citizens did these things,” . . .
https://www.meidasplus.com/p/exclusive-inside-russias-anti-war
