Russia's Anti-War Movement After Six Months: What Happened To 'The Most Important People On The Planet'?

On March 6, Russian police detained more than 5,000 people in 69 cities across the country for protesting Moscow's unprovoked invasion of neighboring Ukraine just two weeks earlier.

In all, about 13,500 anti-war activists were detained in Russia, sometimes brutally, in the first couple of weeks after the invasion, according to OVD-Info, which monitors repression in Russia.

From prison, opposition leader Aleksei Navalny on March 11 urged Russians not to succumb to state propaganda and intimidation, saying "the mad maniac [President Vladimir] Putin will be most quickly stopped by the people of Russia, if they oppose the war."

Calling the protesters "the most important people on the planet," Navalny assured them in a post on Instagram that resisting the war was "not a futile battle."

WATCH: Jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny used a court appearance in May for a defiant and angry anti-war speech.

Navalny Uses Court Appearance For Defiant Anti-War Speech

Around the same time, sociologist and anti-war activist Iskander Yasaveyev told RFE/RL that public support for the war in Russia would wane in "a matter of weeks."

"A significant number of people will begin to compare their situation with what is being reported on the news," Yasaveyev said. "It will dawn on them that they are seeing lies and propaganda."

"How long will this last?" he continued. "I would say only as long as people are able to deceive themselves. There is a lot of information out there, including reliable casualty figures. I think people will start thinking about what this war really is."

Six months later, however, statements like Navalny's and Yasaveyev's ring hollow.

According to the most reliable Western estimates, at least 15,000 Russian troops have been killed in Ukraine in the past six months, a figure that exceeds the death toll from more than 10 years of the Soviet war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Moreover, according to a list maintained by Yale University, more than 1,000 Western companies have left Russia -- merely one of the more visible signs of the effects of unprecedented Western sanctions imposed on Russia in the wake of the invasion.

Many anti-war protesters have been imprisoned or are facing criminal charges that carry long prison terms, while hundreds of thousands of Russians -- many of whom oppose the war -- have fled the country.

It would be extremely difficult to identify any signs of a mass anti-war movement or even of growing public discontent as the war drags on. The anti-war movement in Russia remains confined to the small proportion of courageous individuals who were morally repulsed by the invasion from the moment they heard about it.

'A Complete Sense Of Helplessness'

"I am ready to go to prison," said medical-school instructor Olga Nazarenko, who has been conducting one-person protests in Ivanovo, about 250 kilometers northeast of Moscow, nearly weekly since the invasion. "If that happens, I will serve my term, and when I am released, I will continue my pickets. I am not so afraid of prison. People live there, too. They can't put us all in prison. They can't silence everyone."

Nazarenko said initially she attended fairly substantial anti-war demonstrations, but as they grew increasingly infrequent, she turned to the kind of one-person protests that she saw others doing on social media.

She added that many people have reacted "aggressively" to her protests. She has been doused in paint, and someone painted the Latin letter Z -- a symbol that pro-Kremlin figures have promoted to indicate support for the war and the military -- and the words "Ukrainian Animal" on her mailbox at home.

A person is forcibly detained during an anti-war protest in Yekaterinburg on March 6.

"But I just decorated the inscription with blue and yellow flowers, and now it is sort of pretty," she added.

In the southern city of Astrakhan, a 19-year-old student who asked to be identified only by the name Dilara for fear of repercussions for her views, said there is "almost no political life" in the city now.

"Last year, there was some vague hope during the demonstrations in support of Navalny," she said. "But now, I don't see anything like that. There is a complete sense of helplessness, that we have no rights, no influence. If you are against the war, you are an outcast…"

Ilmira Rakhmatullina is a 30-year-old choreographer from Ufa, the capital of the mid-Volga region of Bashkortostan who has regularly protested against the war since the February 24 invasion. She was one of the 5,000 Russians detained during national anti-war protests on March 6.

"Of course, compared to what happened at the beginning of this stage of the war, fewer and fewer people in Russia are participating in anti-war protests," she told RFE/RL. "They are afraid of repressions against themselves and their families. I don't have a husband yet or children, so I guess I can be bolder. I don't condemn people for being afraid. But at the same time, we can't be silent."

'I Can't Get Through'

Rakhmatullina said she believes her protests are "not futile" because some passersby express support by giving her a thumbs-up or some other similar gesture. She said that when she gets into discussions with "supporters of aggression," she tries to persuade them of her position.

"But I can't get through to the majority of them, who are thoroughly suffused with zombifying propaganda," she said.

Moscow-based sociologist Lev Gudkov, head researcher for the Levada Center polling agency, told RFE/RL that after a brief initial period of confusion, much of the Russian public -- "under the influence of propaganda" and in order to avoid "the unpleasant circumstances of this war" -- experienced "an intensification of apathy, indifference, disassociation from everything that was going on there.

WATCH: Calling Moscow's February 24 invasion of Ukraine a war is a criminal offense in Russia. Yet Russian anti-war protester Vitaly Tsitsurov has for months been picketing Russia's war in Ukraine with a sign that reads "No *ar!" While some Russians support Vitaly's anti-war protest, he's been detained and brutally beaten on the streets of Smolensk for his actions.

In Smolensk, A Russian's Lonely, Dangerous Stand Against The War On Ukraine

"And, strangely enough, this happened precisely among those groups where I expected a completely different reaction -- young people, wealthier people, more educated groups," Gudkov said. "They were the quickest to break down and start showing the most indifference and tolerance regarding the war."

Gudkov said his research indicates a surprising "lack of empathy and humanity" that he attributes, in part, to "the forcible totalitarianization of the mass consciousness" that has been undertaken by the Putin system since about 2003-04. Manifestations of this process, he said, were the glorification of the military and the secret police, the promotion of the idea that the authorities have sovereignty over the citizens, and the rehabilitation of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.

'Normal People Must Come To Power'

With the experience of the last six months behind them, the anti-war activists who spoke with RFE/RL look to the future with trepidation, most of them conceding that real change in Russia will take years or even generations. Such long time lines provide little solace to Ukrainians fighting off a massive invasion force at a huge price of lives and treasure.

"I want to believe that things will change for the better," Bashkir protester Rakhmatullina said. "The main thing is that normal people must come to power. I really hope that within 15 or 20 years Russia will crawl out of this pit it has fallen into and will begin to restore normal, human foundations."

Vladimir Kuznetsov, a 37-year-old former journalist in Penza, has been protesting the invasion of Ukraine since February, incorporating his dissent into performance art pieces.

"The war will end someday," he said, "but people need to heal their souls. How? I believe it can be done with the help of art.

"Until we change ourselves and our government, nothing will really change," he said.

Robert Latypov is the former director of the branch of the now-liquidated Memorial Human Rights Center in the Ural region city of Perm, who in July announced that he had left Russia.

WATCH: Across Russia, teachers who have taken an anti-war stance have been fired from their jobs and charged by the authorities. In Volgograd, Roman Melnichenko is considering emigration. Marina Dubrova, from Sakhalin in Russia's Far East, was denounced to the authorities by her own students.

Fired And Charged: Russian Teachers Who Oppose The War

"There will be a bright future and I hope that we will live to see it," Latypov said. "I think that when our political reality changes, an opportunity will appear. But first there are many things we must do.

"We see the extent to which a significant portion of our society has been zombified," he continued. "We need to talk to them about very basic things -- that war is war and peace is peace…. We must clean out the Augean stables that our political regime has constructed."

In the southwestern city of Voronezh, Nikita Golovizin has hung a Ukrainian flag and a banner reading "No War!" from his balcony since February.

He argues that Russians are "exhausted by deception" and years of being unable to influence events.

"People already accept their helplessness as normal," he said. "They are used to living in shit and consider it normal."

The February 24 invasion of Ukraine changed the course of his life, Golovizin said.

WATCH: Renewed anti-war protests took place in many major Russian cities, from Khabarovsk to Moscow, on March 13. As with previous demonstrations, many people were detained by security forces.

Peaceful Protesters Detained At Renewed Anti-War Rallies Across Russia

"Before February 24, I had a concept of my future. I had plans," he said. "Nothing of that remains. I have to live in a wilderness. It is hard to watch people being rounded up at anti-war protests. It is hard to read the Internet and to walk the streets and see all the people wearing the Z symbol.

"But until we die, we are living," he concluded. "So we must. People have lived in worse conditions, in concentration camps and in the gulag.

"Many Germans opposed Hitler," Golovizin added. "But all of them had to pay [for his crimes]. And all of us will have to pay, too."

Ivanovo protester Nazarenko said she expects change in Russia to take "100 years."

"If we are able to raise our children properly, and they are able to raise theirs properly," she said. "At some point, there will be a sufficient number of people for change to begin. But my generation won't live to see it."

RFE/RL's Russian Service, Siberia.Realities, North Realities, and Idel.Realities contributed to this report.