His goons seize her books, his apparatchiks have canceled her passport, and his spies seem certain to target her for death. Russian Presiden
His goons seize her books, his apparatchiks have canceled her passport, and his spies seem certain to target her for death.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most targeted internal enemy is not a terrorist, a mutineering general, or an outspoken politician in the mold of Alexi Navaly: Instead, she is a quietly spoken poet with asymmetric hair and a vivid tattoo of a rose on her neck.
But Daria Serenko is, without doubt, the woman Putin fears most. And one he seems intent on destroying because she represents a stunning challenge to his hypermasculine vision of Russia.
Her Feminist Anti-War Resistance movement, founded on the second day of the war in Ukraine, Feb. 29, 2022, galvanized women to speak out against the war in Ukraine. The group, which has been banned by the government, now involves thousands of women in 80 cities across Russia. Serenko struggles to break Russia’s patriarchal code and is thus a danger even in exile.
The Feminist Anti-War Resistance has organized hundreds of anti-war protests in at least 60 cities across Russia. Its activists publish anti-war poetry, slogans, and calls for action on price tags in shops, as well as on social media.
They distribute letters with the testimonies of Ukrainian women suffering from the war and a series of anti-war postcards. One of them said, “A war, again. No one talks about it. The hearts of our great-grandfathers and grandfathers ache when we dress up as soldiers, when we go to war against our neighbor.”
