Putin’s unkept promise leaves mothers behind bars

A holiday appeal for leniency turned into silence for imprisoned mothers in Russia. Two separate campaigns—one led by Eva Merkacheva in late 2025, and another launched by exiled activists on International Women’s Day in 2026—ended with pardons that did not inc

When Eva Merkacheva asked Vladimir Putin for a “holiday miracle” in late December 2025, the request sounded simple enough to hold onto: pardon first-time offenders convicted of “minor, non-violent” crimes so mothers could be with their children during the New Year and Christmas holidays.

Merkacheva, a member of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, made the plea on behalf of people with disabilities and mothers in the Russian prison system. Putin seemed open to the idea. Two weeks later, Merkacheva sent him a list outlining groups of prisoners who could be released.

The holidays came and went. No one was pardoned.

On 8 March 2026. International Women’s Day. the exiled activists behind Political Prisoners Memorial launched a campaign with an appeal that again leaned on the same moral fulcrum: humanity. In an online petition. they wrote that it might be unrealistic to expect the immediate release of all political prisoners. but insisted there were at least 20 individuals whose freedom “calls particularly for humanity and compassion”—mothers separated from their underage children.

The deadline they offered was political, not legal. The outcome arrived as a kind of arithmetic the public couldn’t accept. On 17 March 2026, Putin granted pardons to 23 women. The Kremlin did not disclose their names or the crimes for which they had been convicted. It only stated 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. the women in that campaign 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. Russian officials claim the prison population has reached a historic low, citing recruitment of inmates to fight in Ukraine. At the same time. the proportion of women in the system is rising—and they are increasingly cut off from the outside world.

The story sits in a cruel contradiction. Official rhetoric speaks the language of family and order. The lived reality is that a mother’s child can be used as a plea—then ignored.

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. Memorial later received the Nobel Peace Prize. In April 2026, Russia outlawed Memorial as an “extremist” organization.

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. It maintains another database of people “deprived of liberty” on politically motivated grounds in the Russian Federation and the occupied territories of Ukraine. currently containing 5. 359 names—its caveat that the real number is likely at least twice as many.

Men dominate the list. but activists say targeting mothers is strategic because it changes the emotional temperature of a political case. “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.”.

That “collateral” framing matters because it shows what gets lost when repression tightens across wartime Russia. Before 2022. activists say it was sometimes “less likely” for a woman with a small child—or pregnant—to be handed a prison sentence. Olga Zeveleva, a political sociologist and assistant professor in conflict studies at Utrecht University, describes how conversations among activists changed. “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.”.

Under Article 82 of the Russian Criminal Code. prison sentences can be deferred for women who are pregnant or raising children under 14. in certain cases. Davidis argues that in politically motivated prosecutions, that legal protection is rarely treated like an obligation. “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,” he says.

Among the political prisoner mothers recognized by Political Prisoners Memorial, only two 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 received 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.

The campaign for 20 mothers included women convicted on a range of charges that reflect the widening net of wartime criminal justice. Three of the 20 are Ukrainian citizens serving prison sentences of 12 years or more for allegedly committing “high treason” against the Russian Federation. Oksana Hladkykh and Yuliya Stanika were forced to take Russian passports while living under occupation.

Another six were convicted for involvement in organizations or groups Russia has outlawed as “extremist” or “terrorist. ” including the political movement founded by the late Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny. 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.” The account says she reportedly lost her ability to speak while in prison.

Ten others were convicted of “speech crimes.” Maria Ponomarenko. a journalist and mother of two. received 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.

Jennifer Mathers. a senior lecturer at Aberystwyth University in Wales. focusing on Russian politics and security and gender in war. frames the punishment as gendered strategy as much as political intimidation. “Going out and holding your single picket sign saying “No to war” is definitely not what the state wants women to do. ” she says. “It doesn’t want anybody to do it, but it especially doesn’t want women to do it.”.

Historic highs and lows

The gap between official claims and the experience of prisoners has widened as wartime policies have reshaped Russia’s prison system. Russian authorities have reported a dramatic decline in the prison population. In May. Arkady Gostev. director of the federal penitentiary service. claimed there are now 282. 000 people in the system. including 85. 000 in pre-trial detention centres. On paper, the figure marks a new historic low for modern Russia.

Just a few months earlier, in March, Vladimir Davydov—named as the Supreme Court’s newly appointed First Deputy Chief Justice—reported 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 decline to a “humanization” of criminal justice policies, but only Gostev acknowledged that military recruitment has had an impact. Zeveleva puts it bluntly: “Men have a way out now, and that’s to go to the front.”

The Russian defence ministry began enlisting convicts to fight in Ukraine in early 2023. after an initial prison recruitment drive by the Wagner mercenary group. The defence ministry does not publish statistics on recruitment. External estimates vary, and at times interpret any decline in Russia’s prison population as evidence of another recruitment wave. In 2025, Ukraine’s foreign intelligence service claimed that between 140,000 and 180,000 prisoners had enlisted so far.

Women’s numbers remain harder to verify. The penitentiary service last published detailed statistics in early 2022, when women made up 8.9 per cent of the prison population, which stood at 465,896 people.

Experts say that percentage has very likely grown. Natalia Arno, president of the Free Russia Foundation, headquartered in Washington, DC, says there are “more and more female prisoners generally, and political prisoners in particular.”

Arno and others point to recruitment patterns that largely drain men from prison life. while convictions handed down to women have risen. In 2025. women accounted for one-fifth (87. 000) of all convictions—described as a record high for modern Russia—using data from the judicial department at the Russian supreme court published by the independent media outlet Verstka. Eurozine’s partner journal New Eastern Europe could not double-check these numbers. In late April, the judicial department removed all conviction statistics from its website.

Zeveleva says those shifts reflect two simultaneous developments in wartime Russia: “the feminization of political persecution and of poverty.” She explains that even if political prisoners exist in large numbers. prisons still function “basically” as warehouses for the poor. and that prison becomes a way to control poverty. “There are a lot of convictions that look like they’re poverty related. ” she says. adding that theft and petty crime often rise when economic conditions worsen.

Cut off

The mothers in prison are not only punished by time; they are also isolated by the system’s structure. Zeveleva says the lack of clarity about the women inside also stems from how “cut off we are from female prisoners.”

Women’s prisons are reputed to be more strictly controlled than men’s, at least in practice. Zeveleva says women live under intense surveillance and unbending regulations. with prison administration taking full control as opposed to prisons for men that are sometimes effectively run by prison gangs or criminal networks. “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. ” she says.

Access for monitors has also narrowed. Human rights activists have found it increasingly difficult to access and monitor Russian prisons. The Public Monitoring Commission (ONK). in Russian. has been packed with regime loyalists and “can no longer be considered independent.” Other rights groups have shut down or relocated abroad.

Two mothers featured by Political Prisoners Memorial—Kseniya Garina from Irkutsk Krai and Elvira Saifullina from Norilsk—were found guilty of “extremism” over alleged involvement in the “Anti Pytki” project, which reported on torture in the Russian prison system.

And even where contact is allowed, the system enforces separation as a punishment. Arno says support mechanisms for men are better. adding that women’s partners and families often pull back once a woman is behind bars. Amnesty International has documented tactics used to deprive political prisoners of contact with loved ones and even lawyers. in violation of international human rights standards. In a 2024 press release. Natalia Prilutskaya said that the strategy isolates and silences dissenters and inflicts further suffering on families. with “all forms of contact—visits. phone calls. letters—being curtailed.”.

Visiting rights can be severely limited depending on where and under what conditions prisoners serve their terms. Correspondence and phone calls are tightly controlled. Disciplinary sanctions can lead to placement in the punishment isolation cell known as the shtrafnoy izolyator, or SHIZO. Zeveleva says placement can last up to 15 days and does not prevent back-to-back stints. In SHIZO, prisoners are prohibited from making phone calls, receiving visits, and getting parcels.

For women, SHIZO is described as especially brutal. Zeveleva says 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. ” she says. “So this is just a very torturous physical experience for women.”.

Even when visits are permitted, not all women’s prisons are set up to accommodate mothers with young children. Zeveleva says for women who are pregnant, then give birth in the prison system, isolation from their children becomes “a really big issue.”

Judicial department statistics cited by Verstka say Russian courts convicted 467 pregnant women and 1. 707 mothers of children under the age of three in the first half of 2025. The account adds that Olga Petrova. a political prisoner. gave birth in prison in 2025 while serving a seven-year sentence for allegedly financing terrorism.

Solidarity is the best weapon

Davidis acknowledges that the Kremlin is unlikely to release the women named in the “Free Political Prisoner Mothers” campaign or any other political prisoners. “Both pardons and amnesties happen very rarely in Russia under Putin,” he says.

Still. he argues there is value in appealing to official rhetoric about “family values. ” especially when the list focuses on just 20 mothers. “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.”.

Arno agrees that expanding attention to less well-known political prisoners is harder. Several prominent figures were freed in August 2024 as part of the largest prisoner exchange between Russia and western countries since the Cold War. The swap. negotiated under the Biden administration. secured release of 16 high-profile prisoners. including 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 those released, including four women: Alsu Kurmasheva, a Russian-American journalist and mother of two; Lilia Chanysheva and Ksenia Fadeyeva, former Navalny activists; and the anti-war artist Sasha Skochilenko.

Arno calls it “a historic swap” and says that for the first time in 38 years, it was not only US citizens released but also Russian dissidents. “Right now, there is no political will for that.”

After taking 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. Arno says the Trump administration has succeeded in striking deals with Alyksandr Lukashenka of Belarus. securing release of hundreds of political prisoners in exchange for easing some sanctions.

She warns against assuming the same bargaining model would work with Putin. “It’s a different situation with Putin because he doesn’t need anything. Lukashenka needs things, Putin doesn’t. He doesn’t care,” Arno says.

Arno also advises Western leaders not to lift sanctions for “motivational reasons.” “Continue pressure; don’t lift sanctions for motivational reasons. All sanctions should be tied to fundamental changes. ” she says. adding: “And if they are not interested now. that doesn’t mean that the situation won’t change tomorrow.”.

She is adamant that peace talks and policy toward Russia should be “about people.” She says she shares Davidis’s fears that a potential ceasefire agreement would fail to include the release of Russian political prisoners. Unlike Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilian hostages. who have officials in Kyiv advocating for them. Russians behind bars “must rely on activists and the international community. ” Davidis says.

When asked what she would tell Western leaders. Arno responded with a two-part demand: “First. help Ukraine; it’s important that Putin fails there. Second. don’t make the regime stronger.” She adds that keeping political prisoners on the agenda should be a key part of that strategy. “The cost for such repression should be very high for the regime,” Arno says. “Solidarity is the best weapon against dictators.”.

Russia prisons imprisoned mothers Vladimir Putin pardons Political Prisoners Memorial Eva Merkacheva International Women’s Day SHIZO human rights gender and war Russia Ukraine