Alyona Popova

Alyona Popova was born in Yekaterinburg on 15 February 1983.[1] After a while she moved to Novosibirsk, where she lived until 1999.[1]

Popova began her career as a journalist in 1998, when she led regional broadcasting projects in Yekaterinburg.[10]

She moved to Moscow in 2000.[1]

From 2001 to 2003 she worked as a parliamentary correspondent for the Globus news agency. She covered the work of the State Duma and the Federation Council.[10]

Popova graduated and holds a law degree from Kutafin Moscow State Law University and a journalism degree from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2005.[11][12][10]

In 2008, she founded and became the CEO of the VideoSnack project, which provides video content for mobile devices in Russia, Italy, France, the United States, and Canada.[10]

Two years later, she began volunteering, taking part in extinguishing fires in the Moscow Oblast and in Siberia.[10]

In 2011, it launched two projects at once - Startup Poster (Rusbase), which supports the market of venture projects and investments in Russia, as well as Startup Women, aimed at developing women's entrepreneurship in Russia in the field of IT.[10]

In 2012, she founded the volunteer organization "Civil Corps", which helps the population in places of emergencies: floods, fires, earthquakes.[10]

In the same year, Popova was nominated by the party "Fair Russia" to the State Duma of the 6th convocation, and had been registered.[10]

In 2013, she intended to run for mayor of Moscow from the Civil Force party, but was denied registration. A year later, she ran in the elections to the Moscow City Duma of the 6th convocation, and was registered.[10]

In 2016, she launched the project "You are not alone", aimed at protecting women's rights, combating domestic violence.

In 2018, 35 year-old Popova had been trolling pro-Kremlin politicians by stuffing the letterboxes of MPs with photographs of battered women, along with long printed lists containing their names.[13] According to Popova and to other official records, domestic violence kills at least 12,000 women in Russia each year.[13] In February 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin had softened domestic violence legislation, making it easier for abusers to harm women.[13]

On 3 April 2018, the Russian government had refused to allow the protest against sexual harassment, which Popova had told the organizers on 2 April that they would attend the rally at Manezh Square.[14] The rally was originally planned on 29 March, but was postponed due to a mall fire in Kemerovo, killing 64 people.[14] On 12 April, she was arrested for the rally and for a call on Leonid Slutsky's resignation from the State Duma.[15] She was fined with 20,000 rubles by the court for violating the protest law.[16][15]

In the fall of 2018, she launched the Ethics and Technology project, which aims to develop reasonable boundaries and methods for using technology so that it serves society and does not harm.[10]

In 2019, she graduated from the Moscow State Law University named after OE Kutafin, majoring in law.[10]

On 7 October 2019, Popova filed the lawsuit against the Moscow government for using facial recognition cameras used to identify the anti-Kremlin protesters and violating privacy rights.[17] The hearing was scheduled on 21 October[16] On 3 March 2020, the court ruled that the implementation didn't violate such action.[8]

In September 2021, Popova ran for the State Duma elections on strengthening tougher domestic violence laws,[18][19][20] joining the Yabloko party, running for the Preobrazhensky constituency, but was not elected, as she received 6.92% percent of the votes.[21]

On 8 October 2021, after her unsuccessful campaign, she had encouraged other women to run for office to address the current issues in Russia.[22]