“I’m very proud of some things that are happening now. At the end of January there’s a march being planned in Moscow against the decriminalisation. Women from all over Russia are coming and I’m proud that the awareness is high enough that that’s even happening. You have to remember, I started alone – I didn’t know anyone else who would be interested. And now there’s someone else organising this march, which shows a huge wave against the bill already exists.” Mari Davtyan, a 29-year-old criminal lawyer who works predominantly with survivors of domestic violence, says that the lack of legislation in Russia means that it is very hard to prosecute perpetrators of abuse. “Our criminal law protects victims against violence, but there’s no separate law about domestic violence”, she says. Davtyan recalls one case where a woman had been stalked and beaten on over 20 separate occasions by her ex-husband but struggled to have him prosecuted. “The criminal proceedings took over a year. The police just didn’t take her case seriously and there were months when nothing happened, they didn’t collect any evidence or try and move things forward.” Davtyan says that often, those reporting incidents of domestic violence are not listened to or are disbelieved, and cases are simply not prioritised by the police or the criminal justice system. One of the worst cases she has encountered was of a father sexually abusing his daughter. “It was absolutely horrible. When the mother found out what happened, she went to the police but they didn’t help her. The father then took their daughter to Thailand where he abused her again and he even sent a video of him doing this to their daughter to her. Still the police didn’t make a case against him.” Despite the significant and deep-rooted problems facing domestic violence survivors in Russia, and those fighting for their rights, both Pisklakova-Parker and Davtyan believe that there may yet be hope. While Pisklakova-Parker thinks that President Putin may refuse to sign the bill – stopping it at its final stage – the two women agree that media coverage has, at the very least, boosted awareness and debate on the subject. “People are talking about it more now,” Davtyan says. “There’s such a stigma around this issue, but now it’s being discussed more openly.” At the time of publication, a Change.org petition set up in opposition to the bill had received more than 230,000 signatures, and a fortnight ago Thorbjørn Jagland, Secretary General of the Council of Europe sent a letter to the Duma expressing his grave concerns regarding the proposed changes to the law. “I call upon you to do anything within your powers to strengthen the right of Russian families to live free from violence and intimidation,” he wrote. “Reducing ‘battery within the family’ from a criminal to an administrative offence, with weaker sanctions for offenders, would be a clear sign of regression within the Russian Federation and would strike a blow to global efforts to eradicate domestic violence.” The bill will now go to the upper house for approval and, from there, to Putin – so it may not be long before the amendment is passed and the punishment for domestic abuse reduced to nothing more than a fine. For those working to defend women’s rights and protect survivors of domestic violence, it’s clear that their role remains a vital necessity. “Domestic violence was the story that no one spoke about,” Pisklakova-Parker says. “Now we are talking about it, but there’s so much more to be done.”