Researching politically sensitive activism under conditions of war and authoritarian repression poses a particular problem of access. Political communication increasingly moves into private, encrypted, and trust-based digital spaces, while activists face risks extending across borders. Drawing on my experience of conducting long-term digital ethnography between 2022 and 2025 and semi-structured interviews with Russian anti-war feminist activists in exile, this study examines how access to politically sensitive evidence develops under conditions of digital wartime authoritarianism. I extend the concept of trans-parasocial relations to research access, examining how one-sided digital familiarity with a researcher can facilitate initial access and develop into reciprocal research relationships. Before formal recruitment, prospective participants had encountered my public-facing research, lectures, and social media presence and developed a one-sided familiarity with me as a researcher. This familiarity allowed them to assess my political positioning, knowledge of the Russian context, and trustworthiness before deciding whether to participate. Once contact was established, these initially one-sided relations could develop into reciprocal relationships sustained through continued participation, informal interaction, care, and emotional labour. These relationships shaped both access and the evidence the research could produce. They facilitated contact with less publicly visible activists and provided insight into organizational practices, informal networks, and experiences that could not be reconstructed through publicly observable digital traces alone. At the same time, relational access created ethical challenges concerning reciprocity, researcher involvement, emotional labour, and information that became accessible through research but could not safely be made visible in publication. The study uses this experience to reflect on how feminist researchers can adapt practices of access and care when conducting politically sensitive research across digital, authoritarian, and conflict-affected environments.
