Leadership Without Permission

While Ukraine endures invasion, Oleksandra Matviichuk of the Center for Civil Liberties, Ukraine’s 2022 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, documents war crimes and insists that justice cannot wait for peace. “Unpunished evil grows,” she believes. Her work is methodical and unflinching. Leadership, in such circumstances, is not ambition. It is obligation.

Across our region, women are stepping forward in similar moments of strain. These women are sometimes described as reluctant leaders. I do not agree. They did not seek prominence for its own sake — but when responsibility fell to them, they did not step aside.

Yulia Navalnaya did not retreat after the imprisonment — and later killing — of her husband, Alexei Navalny. She did not hesitate. She spoke with clarity when the Kremlin expected silence. Instead she announced, “I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny and continue to fight for our country.”

My friend Evgenia Kara‑Murza didn’t stay at home when her husband and FRF’s Vice President Vladimir Kara‑Murza was arrested in Russia for his anti‑war position and later given a 25‑year Stalin‑era prison sentence. She led advocacy efforts for his release and has become one of the most visible voices advocating for all other Russian political prisoners. Evgenia underscores the imperative that “Talking about people who end up behind bars, naming their names and telling their stories, is hugely important.”

After Boris Nemtsov was assassinated 11 years ago, his daughter Zhanna stepped forward and continues his legacy.

In Belarus, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya entered public life after her husband Sergei was jailed for challenging an entrenched regime. What began as solidarity became national leadership. She did not ask whether she was ready. She understood that the moment required her.

Maria Kolesnikova became one of the most courageous faces of Belarus’s democratic movement and personally resisted the authoritarian regime of Lukashenko at enormous personal cost.

Many others continue to speak even under dictatorship. Today dozens of women remain political prisoners in Russia — journalists Maria Ponomarenko and Antonina Favorskaya, lawyer Maria Bontsler, activist Olga Smirnova, theatre director Zhenya Berkovich, playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, doctor Nadezhda Buyanova, and many others whose names deserve to be heard beyond prison walls.

This pattern is not confined to Eastern Europe. In South Korea, Han Myeong‑sook moved from democracy activism under authoritarian rule to become her country’s first female prime minister. Different history. Different language. The same principle: when institutions are tested, women do not wait for permission to steady them.

I learned about Han Myeong‑sook’s
experience from my friend Aleksandra Garmazhapova, President of Free Buryatia Foundation, a former journalist who was the first to discover Yevgeny Prigozhin’s troll farms. When the full‑scale invasion of Ukraine began, and it became immediately clear that Putin’s war was imperial and colonial, and that ethnic minorities from Russia’s national republics would be disproportionally used as “cannon fodder,” Aleksandra stood up and created the very first anti‑war ethnic minority organization. Her example inspired others, and the indigenous voices of Russia began to be heard across the globe.

Like Aleksandra, I was born in Buryatia, near Lake Baikal — at the crossroads of Russian and Asian (Mongolian) history. In modern Russia, identity is often debated as fiercely as policy. Genealogy can be treated as a credential. Belonging can be questioned more easily than competence.

The women who shaped me did not wait for validation. During the Second World War, when the men of our village were sent to the front, my grandmother ran an entire community. Harvests did not pause for war. Families still needed bread. Responsibility fell where it was needed — and she carried it. My mother believed education was a form of sovereignty. No regime, she taught me, can confiscate a disciplined mind.

Leadership, I learned early, does not begin with a title. It begins with responsibility.

The women I work alongside — many forced to leave our homelands — did not seek prominence. Being forced into exile taught many of us that leadership is not a title, but a responsibility we carry across borders. We have stepped forward because retreat would have meant surrendering our country’s future to those who have proved unworthy to lead.

International Women’s Month invites us to look more carefully at the women shaping our societies — not only those on global stages, but those whose steadiness holds institutions together when they are under strain. Their acts of influence and leadership should not be only recognized when there are holidays, but throughout the year.

The pattern is not unique to one country or one fight. Wherever those in power resist accountability and commit crimes, women are often stepping forward — not as symbols, but as leaders prepared to shoulder responsibility.

I never set out to lead. I set out to be free — and to help others live in freedom. Like most of us, the leadership followed.