In a secret location outside Lviv, in western Ukraine, a very special conference was held this week. About twenty representatives of different sectors of the Russian opposition met on May 22 and 23 to outline a new unitary political platform. This structure, designed by the so-called Russian Opposition Forum in support of Ukraine, has two founding ideas: the first is that Ukraine must recover all the territory lost since 2014; The second is that the threat of war will only end when Russian President Vladimir Putin disappears, and the only way for him to fall is through a revolution, whether peaceful or violent.
Ukraine wants to destabilize the aggressor country by giving wings to the weak opposition to Putin. “In many countries they pat us on the back, they feel sorry for us, but in Ukraine they understand our key role because they know that this war will only end with a change of regime in Russia,” Iliá Ponoramev, the most vulnerable face, explained to Morning Express. known to the Congress of People’s Deputies (CDP), an opposition organization based in Poland. “We need a government that gives us support, and that is the Ukrainian one,” adds Ponomarev. An envoy of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, was present at the Forum meeting.
Also in the galaxy of anti-Putin groups linked to Ukraine is the Civic Council, an entity based in Warsaw that since 2023 has organized Russian volunteers in Europe who want to fight in the Ukrainian ranks. There are three paramilitary groups that serve on the Ukrainian side: the Russian Volunteer Corps, the Siberian Battalion and the Russian Freedom Legion. This last unit, which declares itself a follower of the liberal ideology of the late Russian opponent Alexei Navalny, participated in the Lviv Forum. The Civic Council broke with the Volunteer Corps due to its extreme right-wing ideology. The Siberian Battalion is the most recently created regiment, and its political objective is to decentralize power in Russia and encourage the right of self-determination of its ethnic minorities. Last March, the Ukrainian Armed Forces sponsored a joint press conference in kyiv with commanders of the three groups.
Neither these armed groups nor the Ukrainian army reveal the number of fighters that swell their ranks, but Ponomarev estimates that there may be between 3,000 and 4,000 Russians fighting for Ukraine. This figure is higher than the thousand volunteers that indicated previous estimates by this newspaper based on data that has been disseminated by military units and the media.
Kasparov and Khodorkovsky
Two famous names of the Russian opposition in exile participated by videoconference in the days of the Lviv Forum: the chess player and politician Garri Kasparov and the former oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Neither of them has signed the Forum’s manifesto, but Ponomarev was convinced that Kasparov will, just as he has signed similar previous statements. The resolution agreed in Lviv emphasizes that all territories illegally annexed by Russia must be returned to Ukraine, including the Crimean peninsula, and that “it must be a priority to provide support to groups of volunteer partisans who fight with weapons against the regime.” of Putin.”
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The manifesto was read before the media by Mark Feigin, who was a lawyer for the Russian activists and artists Pussy Riot, now an opponent based in France. Feigin indicates that Khodorkovsky, and other groups resistant to Putin, such as Navalny’s family and team, are not prepared to assume the theses of the Russian sectors protected by kyiv: “Khodorkovsky is a classic liberal who is afraid of radical positions. He still penalizes the Russian opposition for supporting Ukraine militarily. Perhaps he needs a transition period to assume these positions that they now see as radical.”
Feigin revealed that there are negotiations to establish a Russian Opposition Center in kyiv this year. In his opinion, the Ukrainian capital has better conditions to house Russian exiles than Paris, Berlin or Washington: “Ukraine is a Slavic country, so communication with the Russian people is easier, and they are already fighting against Putin.” Ponomarev, who previously went into exile in Ukraine, indicates that the CDP is in Poland because logistically it is better to be in the European Union.
Weapons, the only option
This newspaper interviewed three members of the Siberian Battalion last April. These were critical of Khodorkovsky, whom they accused of having confronted Putin only because he ended his career as an oligarch, but also of Navalny, who died in a Russian prison last February. “Navalni wanted an authoritarian model like Putin’s, but without corruption,” said Control, the code name of one of the most senior commanders of the Siberian Battalion.
The political profiles of the organizations supported by kyiv are different, but they share the same objective, to overthrow Putin, and the same conclusion: it is only possible to confront his violent repression with more violence. “The current situation is very different from when Khodorkovsky or Navalny created their political structures in Russia. They were times of peace and now it is a time of war. Now there is no other way to fight Putin than with weapons,” says Vitali Skoibeda, a member of the CDP. This former deputy (1990-1993) of the opposition in Saint Petersburg, who fought in 2022 against the Russian invader alongside military units of the Ukrainian far-right group Pravi Sektor, is sure that personalities like Kasparov or Khodorkovsky “will increasingly be convinced that only weapons can oust Putin.”
Another opponent attending the Lviv meeting, residing in Ukraine, is doctor Andrei Volna. He also justified the violent action: “It has been shown that there is no way to change the regime peacefully. “It is a young fascist regime, it is not like the last years of Francoism in Spain, when the system had weakened.”
The men of the Siberian Battalion explained in the April interview with this newspaper that they were in favor of “a change in strategy” to liquidate people from Putin’s circle of power. Ponomarev supports this idea and, asked about the possible negative reaction of the United States and the EU, responds: “I don’t care; “If they had given sufficient support to Ukraine at the beginning of the invasion, we would not have to take the war to Russia now.” According to this former Duma deputy, in Russia they have 10,000 people willing to rebel against Putin: “We need armed people to confront the police, for example, to protect peaceful protests that occur.”
Ponomarev’s expectations may seem exaggerated. At the Lviv forum, Zelensky’s office was asked to defend the CDP as Russia’s legitimate representative abroad – this body is made up of former representatives of the Russian legislative branch – with the ability to decide how the CDP’s assets are invested. Russian state frozen in Europe and North America. The G-7 countries are debating what legal avenues there are to transfer for the defense of Ukraine part of the more than 270 billion euros in Russian assets that kyiv’s allies have retained. Ponomarev is convinced that his situation is similar to that of the Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whom the European Parliament recognized in 2019 as the legitimate president of Venezuela. This diplomatic operation, in order to pressure the Venezuelan regime of Nicolás Maduro, failed and in 2021 Guaidó lost the support of the EU.
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