Russia’s imprisoned mothers

In December 2025, the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council member Eva Merkacheva asked Vladimir Putin to perform a “holiday miracle”. Appealing on behalf of people with disabilities and mothers in the Russian prison system, Merkacheva suggested pardoning first-time offenders convicted of “minor, non-violent” crimes. “The New Year and Christmas holidays are coming up. Let mothers be with their children,” she urged. Putin seemed open to the idea, and two weeks later, Merkacheva sent the Russian president a list outlining groups of prisoners who could be released. But the holidays came and went, and no one was pardoned.

A few months later, on International Women’s Day (March 8th), exiled activists from Political Prisoners Memorial launched a campaign with a similar humanitarian appeal. “We recognize that it may be unrealistic to expect the immediate release of all political prisoners. There are, however, at least 20 individuals whose freedom calls particularly for humanity and compassion,” the group wrote in an online petition. “They are mothers who have been separated from their underage children.”

The following week, on March 17th, Putin granted pardons to 23 women. The Kremlin did not disclose their names or the crimes for which they had been convicted, revealing only that the pardoned women either had children or had relatives who “participated in the special military operation”, the official euphemism for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. None of the mothers named in the petition were pardoned. As of writing, they remain scattered in prisons across Russia, alongside tens of thousands of other women. How many exactly is unknown; the federal penitentiary service stopped publishing detailed statistics in 2022. Yet Russian officials claim that the prison population has reached a historic low, due in part to the recruitment of inmates to fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile, the proportion of women in the system is rising, and they are increasingly cut off from the outside world.

Collateral damage

Political Prisoners Memorial became an independent initiative in April 2022, after a Moscow court upheld the dissolution of the Memorial Human Rights Center, a branch of Russia’s oldest and most respected rights group. Later that year, Memorial was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Four years after that, in April 2026, Russia outlawed Memorial as an “extremist” organization. Today, Political Prisoners Memorial recognizes more than 1,600 political and religious prisoners in Russia, based on the Council of Europe’s definition of the term. The group also maintains another database of people “deprived of liberty” on politically motivated grounds in the Russian Federation and the occupied territories of Ukraine. It currently contains 5,359 names, with the caveat that the real number is likely at least twice as many.

The overwhelming majority of these political prisoners are men. For activists, however, drawing attention to a smaller demographic is a strategic move. “When we speak about political prisoners who are mothers of underage children, we think it’s the most morally and emotionally grounded demand,” says Sergei Davidis, who heads the Political Prisoners Memorial project. “They are not the only victims of their imprisonment. Their underage children are victims who are innocent, even from the state’s point of view. They are collateral damage.”

At one time, mothers weighing the risks of political protest in Putin’s Russia considered their children a mitigating factor. But the Kremlin’s wartime crackdown on domestic dissent has proven indiscriminate.

“Before 2022, it was less likely for a woman who had a small child or who was pregnant to be handed a prison sentence,” says the political sociologist Olga Zeveleva, an assistant professor in conflict studies at Utrecht University. “You’d hear people say, “I've got a small child, it's safe for me to go to this protest. But it's better for my husband to stay home because they won't throw me in prison.” This kind of chatter among activists is far less likely now.”

Article 82 of the Russian Criminal Code provides for the deferral of prison sentences for women who are pregnant or raising children under 14, in certain cases. However, those on trial for speaking out against the war or the regime are rarely granted such postponements.

“It is not an obligation of the court, but it is a right. And the courts are less inclined to be especially human in cases of politically motivated prosecution,” Davidis says.

Among those Political Prisoners Memorial has recognized as political prisoners, only two mothers have received deferred sentences. Olga Chepeleva, a 35-year-old Belgorod resident, spent more than six months in pre-trial detention on charges of spreading “fake news” about the Russian military. Then, in February 2026, she was handed a five-and-a-half-year prison sentence, with a deferment until her child turns 14. Ilona Nargornova, a 59-year-old mother of six, was found guilty in 2024 of belonging to the Revival Christian Church – a Ukrainian religious organization Russia has banned. Nargornova, who was under house arrest while awaiting trial, received a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, deferred until 2027.

Of the 20 women featured in the “Free Political Prisoner Mothers” campaign, three are citizens of Ukraine serving prison sentences of 12 years or more for allegedly committing “high treason” against the Russian Federation. Two of them, Oksana Hladkykh and Yuliya Stanika, were forced to take Russian passports while living under occupation. Another six were found guilty of involvement in organizations and groups Russia has outlawed as “extremist” or “terrorist” – such as the political movement founded by the late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny. The journalist and activist Olga Komleva, for example, was sentenced to 12 years in prison for volunteering at Navalny’s Ufa headquarters before the movement was designated as “extremist”. In a cruel twist of fate, she reportedly lost her ability to speak while in prison.

Ten others were convicted of speech crimes. The journalist and mother of two Maria Ponomarenko, for example, was given six years for allegedly spreading “fake news” about the March 2022 bombing of the Mariupol theatre, where hundreds of civilians were sheltering while Russia laid siege to the city. Elena Abramova, a translator from St Petersburg, was convicted of “discrediting” the Russian military for protesting alone, with signs saying “No war!” and “A world without war. Russia without Putin”. She received a two-year prison sentence.

“Going out and holding your single picket sign saying 'No to war' is definitely not what the state wants women to do,” says Jennifer Mathers, a senior lecturer at Aberystwyth University in Wales, focused on Russian politics and security and gender in war. “It doesn't want anybody to do it, but it especially doesn't want women to do it.”

Historic highs and lows

Against this backdrop of intensifying wartime repressions, the Russian authorities have reported a dramatic decline in the prison population. In May, Arkady Gostev, director of the federal penitentiary service, claimed that there are now 282,000 people in the system, including 85,000 in pre-trial detention centres. On paper, this figure marks a new historic low for modern Russia. Just a few months ago, in March, the Supreme Court’s newly appointed First Deputy Chief Justice, Vladimir Davydov, reported that the prison population had dropped to a record 308,000, down from about one million in 2001 (when Putin first took office). Both officials attributed the recent decline to a “humanization” of criminal justice policies, but only Gostev acknowledged that military recruitment has had an impact. As Zeveleva put it, “Men have a way out now, and that’s to go to the front line.”

The Russian defence ministry began enlisting convicts to fight in Ukraine in early 2023, following an initial prison recruitment drive by the Wagner mercenary group. While tens of thousands of prisoners and criminal suspects have reportedly joined up, the defence ministry does not publish any such statistics. External estimates also vary wildly, often interpreting any decline in Russia’s prison population as indicative of another recruitment wave. In 2025, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service claimed that between 140,000 and 180,000 prisoners had enlisted so far.  

As Russia’s prison demographics continue to shift, the precise number of women currently in the system is unclear. The penitentiary service last published detailed statistics in early 2022. At that time, women made up 8.9 per cent of the prison population, which stood at 465,896 people.

According to experts, this percentage has very likely grown. “[There are] more and more female prisoners generally, and political prisoners in particular,” says Natalia Arno, the president of the Free Russia Foundation, a pro-democracy organization headquartered in Washington, DC.

Like the rest of the Russian army, the vast majority of prison recruits are men. Although there have been intermittent reports about recruitment from women’s prisons, this appears to be marginal at most. “If there were a large number of women being recruited from the prisons, the word would get out because it’s so unusual,” Mathers points out. “There isn’t a narrative which would support recruiting large numbers of women from anywhere,” she adds. “The way they frame the recruitment of men – “be a man, join the military” – runs counter to any sense that they would want a significant number of women to join.”

In addition to this outflow of men to the frontline, the number of convictions handed down to women has risen steadily for the past five years. In 2025, these accounted for one-fifth (87,000) of all convictions – a record high for modern Russia, according to data from the judicial department at the Russian supreme court published by the independent media outlet Verstka. New Eastern Europe could not double-check these numbers; in late April, the judicial department removed all conviction statistics from its website.

According to Zeveleva, this speaks to two simultaneous developments in wartime Russia: the feminization of political persecution and poverty. “Even though in Russia there are many political prisoners, still prisons are basically warehouses for the poor, and prison is a way to control poverty,” she explains. “There are a lot of convictions that look like they're poverty related,” she continues, listing theft and petty crime as examples. “These types of crimes often go up when the economic situation becomes more challenging.”

Cut off

While official statistics on the Russian prison system are either unreliable, incomplete, or restricted, this is not the only reason so little is known about the women on the inside. “Some of that actually has to do with how cut off we are from female prisoners,” Zeveleva explains.

Russia’s women’s prisons have a reputation for being more strictly controlled than those for men, which are sometimes effectively run by prison gangs or criminal networks. With the prison administration fully in charge, women live under intense surveillance and unbending regulations. “A lot of former prisoners say that an average women’s prison in Russia is as strict as the strictest regimes of the men’s prisons,” Zeveleva says.

Human rights activists, meanwhile, have found it increasingly difficult to access and monitor Russian prisons, not least because the country’s main prisoners’ rights watchdog, the Public Monitoring Commission (known by the acronym ONK, in Russian), has been packed with regime loyalists and can no longer be considered independent. Other rights groups have fallen victim to wartime repressions, forcing them to shut down or relocate abroad.

Two of the political prisoner mothers, for example, Kseniya Garina from Irkutsk Krai and Elvira Saifullina from Norilsk, were found guilty of “extremism” for their alleged involvement in the “Anti Pytki” project – an initiative that reported on cases of torture in the Russian prison system.

Activists often provide vital support for prisoners, especially those who cannot rely on family or friends. “Support mechanisms for men are better,” Arno says. “Women don’t give up on their men, they don’t give up on their husbands, sons, and brothers. But as soon as a woman is behind bars, her partner, husband, or boyfriend doesn’t care about her any longer.”

Amnesty International has documented a range of tactics Russian authorities use to arbitrarily deprive political prisoners of contact with their loved ones and even their lawyers, in breach of international human rights standards. “This is a deliberate strategy of the Russian government to isolate and silence dissenters and inflict further suffering on them and their families. All forms of contact – visits, phone calls, letters – are being curtailed,” said Natalia Prilutskaya, Amnesty International’s Russia researcher, in a 2024 press release.

Under Russian law, prisoners' visiting rights can be severely restricted depending on where and under which conditions they serve their term. Their correspondence and phone calls are also tightly controlled. And those facing disciplinary sanctions are often subjected to solitary confinement in a punishment isolation cell (shtrafnoy izolyator, in Russian, or SHIZO for short). Placement in a SHIZO, which can last up to 15 days (and does not preclude back-to-back stints), means being prohibited from making phone calls, having visits, and receiving parcels. “This has become a punishment practice for political prisoners, in particular, and they're sent to SHIZO quite often,” Zeveleva says.

SHIZO conditions are also worse for female prisoners; unlike men, they are forced to wear minimal clothing in the punishment cell. “They're stripped down to the bare minimum of clothes, and the SHIZO is notorious for being very, very cold, especially in the winter. So this is just a very torturous physical experience for women,” Zeveleva explains. Moreover, even when visits are permitted, not all women’s prisons are set up to accommodate mothers with young children. “For women with young children or women who are pregnant and then give birth while in the prison system, this isolation from their children is a really big issue,” Zeveleva says.

According to judicial department statistics cited by Verstka, Russian courts convicted 467 pregnant women and 1,707 mothers of children under the age of three in the first half of 2025. One political prisoner, Olga Petrova, even gave birth in prison in 2025 while serving a seven-year sentence for allegedly financing terrorism.

Solidarity is the best weapon

Sergei Davidis acknowledges that the Kremlin is unlikely to release the women featured in the “Free Political Prisoner Mothers” campaign or any other political prisoners for that matter. “Both pardons and amnesties happen very rarely in Russia under Putin,” he says. Still, in his view, appealing to official rhetoric about “family values” along with the fact that there are only 20 mothers on the list may offer some hope.

“We cannot be sure that this demand will be heard, but it has the highest probability to be heard,” Davidis says. “Even if we fail in our attempt to release them, we will provide them with a high level of support,” he adds.

According to Arno, a participant in the PACE Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces, advocating on behalf of less well-known political prisoners is more difficult. Several prominent figures were freed in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and western countries since the Cold War. Negotiated under the Biden administration, the swap secured the release of 16 high-profile prisoners, including the Wall Street Journal correspondent Evan Gershkovich, Free Russia Foundation Vice President Vladimir Kara-Murza, and Memorial co-founder Oleg Orlov.

Putin signed presidential pardons for 13 of the released, including four women: the Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva (a mother of two), former Navalny activists Lilia Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva, and the anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko. “It was a historic swap,” Arno recalls. “For the first time in 38 years, it wasn't only US citizens who were released but also Russian dissidents. Right now, there is no political will for that.”

After coming into office in January 2025, US President Donald Trump seemed intent on negotiating an end to Russia’s war against Ukraine. More than a year on, peace talks have effectively stalled. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has succeeded in striking deals with Alyksandr Lukashenka of Belarus, securing the release of hundreds of political prisoners in exchange for easing some sanctions.

“It’s a different situation with Putin because he doesn’t need anything. Lukashenka needs things, Putin doesn’t. He doesn’t care,” Arno explains. At the same time, she warns against taking a similar approach in negotiations with the Kremlin. “Continue pressure; don’t lift sanctions for motivational reasons. All sanctions should be tied to fundamental changes,” Arno advises. “And if they are not interested now, that doesn't mean that the situation won't change tomorrow.”

Arno is adamant that both peace talks and policy towards Russia “should be about people”. She expressed fears alongside Davidis that a potential ceasefire agreement would fail to include the release of Russian political prisoners. While Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages have officials in Kyiv to advocate for them, Russians behind bars must rely on activists and the international community, Davidis says.

Asked what advice she would give to western leaders, Arno was quick to respond. “First, help Ukraine; it’s important that Putin fails there. Second, don’t make the regime stronger,” she says, adding that keeping political prisoners on the agenda should be a key component of this strategy.

“The cost for such repression should be very high for the regime,” Arno says. “Solidarity is the best weapon against dictators.”

 

Eilish Hart is a journalist and editor specializing in coverage of Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe. Formerly the deputy editor of Meduza’s English edition and editor of The Beet newsletter, she writes on regional politics, conflict, culture, and human rights. She holds an MA in European and Russian Affairs from the University of Toronto.