Daria Serenko, another founder of the FAS, told Novaya Europe that the action had been devised to prompt dialogue. The idea was first used by female activists in Israel in the 1980s who staged Women in Black demonstrations to protest the occupation of Palestine.
Almost as successful was another FAS action entitled Mariupol 5000, in which people across Russia erected homemade crosses for the victims of the siege. FAS members have also been leading support groups for women, publishing Ukrainian testimonies about life under Russian occupation, and teaching refugee women how to recognise the warning signs of human trafficking and where they can go for help.
Ella Rossman, an FAS organiser and PhD candidate at University College London, said that the group had intentionally cut back on street actions in the interest of member safety, citing the case of Sasha Skochilenko, who on Thursday was given a seven-year prison sentence for placing price stickers with anti-war messaging in her local grocery store. FAS is now focusing its energies on online initiatives such as these, as well as investigative journalism and anti-disinformation projects.
Nordik agreed that one of the organisation’s main purposes is to counter the “information blockade.” Members have written and disseminated anti-war texts in various formats, including several modelled on Orthodox prayers — called “Prayers to the Mother of God” — that went viral in March last year. FAS members including coordinator Liliya Vezhevatova have also started a newspaper called Women’s Truth, published in the style of an old-fashioned regional newspaper and targeted at older women in Russia. It integrates stories about female anti-war activists, especially older ones, with anti-war jokes and other useful information, such as how to install a VPN.
As for the younger generation, Serenko said FAS regularly publishes a pamphlet called Anti-Lessons, which is targeted at teenagers and aims to counteract the propaganda they receive in their mandatory “Important Conversation” civics classes at school. Other Russian feminists, including Leda Garina and Yalia Karpukhina, have spearheaded educational video series for young people in which they discuss Russian imperial exploits, delivering what the channel’s main page calls a “feminist criticism of imperial myths”.