In the Non-Chernozem zone, winter vetch is the only legume component of winter grain crops for forage purposes. In spring, summer and autumn, it can be used for feeding animals, harvesting hay, silage, and haylage. However, due to the relatively low winter hardiness, it has not yet been widely used in the feed production of the Non-Chernozem zone. The average winter hardiness of most vetch varieties in the Moscow region is 57–65%. In Federal Williams Research Center of Forage Production and Agroecology has developed a strategy for creating winter vetch varieties with high winter hardiness, resistance to abiotic stresses, high yields in green mass and seeds. The work was based on the thesis that the external environment can be used as an effective selective background, allowing genotypes with low adaptive potential to stress factors to be excluded from the population during the replanting process. As a source material, it is recommended to use old-town, naturally formed populations belonging to the Central Russian ecological and geographical group by the method of intraspecific hybridization in combination with targeted artificial and natural selection in phytocenosis and provocative backgrounds, varieties of winter vetch Lugovskaya 2 and Lugovskaya 3 were created. Winter hardiness of these varieties reaches 90–92%, dry matter yield 52–79 centner/ha, seeds 9.1–10.5 centner/ha. The values of the Serpukhovskaya standard variety were 64%, 37 and 4.1 centner/ha, respectively. High winter hardiness and increased competitiveness in the phytocenosis of new varieties is provided mainly by the formation of shoots from underground and lower aboveground nodes.