RussianWomenDiscussion.com Has Closed: What Happened And Where To Go Now

If you spent any time in the online communities dedicated to Russia, Ukraine, the wider FSU, often still called the mail-order bride (MOB) scene, you will recognise the name RussianWomenDiscussion.com. For over twenty years, it was one of the central forums in that niche, taking its place among a succession of sites that rose, grew large, and eventually disappeared.

In its final years, the site became increasingly difficult to load. Visitors encountered expired SSL certificates, half-rendered pages, broken image links and stalled requests that suggested a forum running on software from another era. This screenshot shows the site frozen mid-failure, something regular visitors came to expect in its last eighteen months.

Many modern browsers couldn’t even access it in the last year or two, as it never installed basic HTTPS – and some browsers simply won’t connect to a site that doesn’t use that any more.

To understand the end of RussianWomenDiscussion.com, it helps to look at the wider ecosystem it came from. There was a time when several English language forums covered Russia, Ukraine, expat life, culture, travel, visas and the Western to Slavic relationship scene. Almost every one of those forums has now vanished.

RWG and RWD: The Two Originals

If we go back to the “mail order bride” forum scene of twenty years or so ago, there were two main sites men got advice on dating in Russia and Ukraine: RWG and RWD.

RussianWomenGuide.com (RWG)

RussianWomenGuide.com (usually shortened to RWG) was busy, energetic and served as the main hub for a large community during the height of the MOB agency dating scene. Many long-standing users of later forums began there. RWG’s end was abrupt. It was sold to a dating company that closed the forum entirely, almost certainly to remove years of unflattering commentary about their business. Overnight, RWG disappeared, and its members were left without a home.

RussianWomenDiscussion.com (RWD)

RussianWomenDiscussion.com (RWD) was the other forum. It became known for strict, often heavy-handed moderation under Dan. Posts were removed, threads disappeared, and bans were handed out liberally. Despite that, the site remained active for many years and developed a strong identity of its own.

Strong-handed moderation exhausts users over time. Many long-term contributors drifted away, not because they had nothing to say but because they no longer wished to navigate rules that seemed to expand or contract depending on the mood of the day. When RWG disappeared, its former users had a decision to make: accept RWD’s style or look elsewhere.

The Emergence of RUAdventures

Not all RWG refugees wanted to step into an environment where posts could be deleted for tone, phrasing or minor disagreement. From that mixture of displaced RWG members and people who had grown tired of RWD’s approach, RUAdventures.com was founded around twenty years ago.

It began as the alternative. A place where conversations were not routinely filtered, where threads were not removed for trivial reasons, and where adults could speak like adults. In the early years, RUAdventures was the upstart and was dismissed by some as a temporary splinter group. Few predicted that it would go on to outlive every other forum in the genre.

The Fall of the Remaining Forums

RussianMeetingPlace (RMP)

RussianMeetingPlace.com (RMP) was another sizeable forum during the mid 2000s, covering much the same ground as RWG and RWD. For a while, it carried a respectable amount of traffic and had a recognisable user base. Its decline was not dramatic. The owner simply lost interest and drifted away. With no active management, no updates and no one steering the ship, RMP faded and eventually died quietly.

RedTape.ru

RedTape.ru served a slightly different purpose. Its core audience was expats dealing with bureaucracy and everyday life in Russia. Visas, documentation and residency issues were its niche. It lasted longer than some, but like most single-topic forums, it suffered from entropy. As the expat population shifted and Russia became less accessible to Westerners, activity dropped. In time, the forum closed after a long period of attrition.

RealRussia.co.uk

RealRussia.co.uk was attached to a visa and travel service. Its forum once held active discussions centred on trips, rail travel, logistics and the usual questions asked by first-time visitors. When tourism to Russia declined sharply after 2014, the forum’s traffic collapsed with it. With little new demand, the forum faded and was eventually removed. Nothing meaningful remains.

GoGabber

GoGabber was a spin-off forum from an online dating platform, which meant the community arrived with a degree of baggage (not to mention lots of angry babushkas). Over the years, the forum developed a reputation for toxicity that proved impossible to reverse. RUAdventures eventually bought the site in an effort to preserve what remained, but by then the culture was too far gone. The only realistic outcome was to close it.

RWD’s Long Decline

With the rest of the ecosystem either shuttered, sold or abandoned, RussianWomenDiscussion.com stood for several years as one of the last survivors. Survival in name is not the same as survival in practice.

RWD was running on a very old version of SMF. It had no HTTPS, expired SSL certificates appeared regularly, and the hosting setup became progressively less reliable. Long-standing users became accustomed to browser warnings, broken layouts and stalled page loads. It was clear the site was in a state of unmanaged decay.

Outdated forums attract problems. Old software becomes a magnet for bots and exploits, and without updates or proper hosting, even basic stability becomes hit and miss. By the time the closure announcement was posted, the technical decline had been obvious for years.

Moderation That Outlasted Maintenance

RWD’s moderation culture was well known long before its technical collapse. Under Dan, the forum developed a reputation for deleting posts, trimming threads and banning users with an enthusiasm that became part of its identity. Many accepted this as the price of admission. Others left quietly.

What stood out in the final period was the contrast between the failing infrastructure and the still active moderation queue. In one of its last notable actions, in December 2025, RWD’s moderators deleted a harmless thread from RUAdventures.com inviting RWD members to join the functioning community in the genre as RWD was closing. The forum was visibly dying, last rites read, the software was barely holding together, yet the instinct to remove an innocuous invitation to the few remaining members remained intact. It was an ironic illustration of a culture where heavy-handed moderation continued long after the maintenance had stopped.

RussianWomenDiscussion.com: The Final Announcement

On 1 December 2025, a short locked announcement appeared under the admin account:

There were no technical details, no archive plan and no attempt to migrate content or users. After over two decades online, the site simply closed. Everything posted there, trip reports, advice, debates, arguments and years of accumulated experience, is now gone.

RWD joins Planet Love, RWG, RMP, RedTape, RealRussia, GoGabber and almost every other forum from that era in the long list of vanished communities.

And Then There Was One: RUAdventures

With RWD’s closure, the original ecosystem is gone. Forums that once defined the mail order bride scene, the expat circuit and the broader Russia and FSU interest community have all disappeared.

Only one forum remains: RUA

If you still want a forum that loads reliably and actually works, RUAdventures.com is the only one that remains. Pages load instantly, the software is current, the hosting is modern, and discussions continue without the technical issues that defined RWD’s final years.

RUAdventures.com is not just a surviving forum. It has become the main English-language community for serious discussion about Russia, Ukraine, the FSU and everything connected to it. The older topics remain – culture, travel, trip reports, relationships and day-to-day life – but the conversation has broadened over the years.

• World affairs and geopolitics
• The conflict in Ukraine
• East–West relations and sanctions
• Visas, travel logistics and practical advice
• Cultural discussions across Russia, Ukraine and the wider FSU

Contributors come from the FSU, the US, the UK, Europe, and elsewhere, and debate is allowed to run its course without being stifled because it contradicts a preferred narrative. If you were waiting for RussianWomenDiscussion.com to return, it will not. If you want the kind of discussion these forums once hosted, RUAdventures.com is where that conversation continues.

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