Russian Dissidents Are Fighting Over How To Ensure Putin S Defeat

As Ukraine launched a fierce counteroffensive this week aimed at ousting Moscow’s invading forces, several hundred Russian democrats gathered in Lithuania to discuss the role they can play in the battle against President Vladimir Putin’s regime. The dissidents attending the Free Russia Congress were in the difficult position of cheering on the Ukrainians, hoping for their country’s defeat on the battlefield. “Like Lenin,” said Dmitri Gudkov, a prominent opposition figure, adding a wry laugh at how democrats are in a similar position to the Bolshevik leader who waited in exile for the right moment to launch his revolution as the army of Russia collapsed during the first world war. “Putin must be defeated. There is no other option to end this war,” said Mr. Gudkov, one of the last opposition lawmakers to sit in the Russian parliament, which is now fully controlled by Kremlin loyalists. “It’s complicated for politicians, but I think I’ll have a chance to be elected in a new country. We will only have elections after Putin.” To get there, Russia’s opposition forces will first have to resolve their internal conflicts: the country’s democrats sometimes seem to have as much loathing for each other as they do for the Kremlin. The ballrooms of the Grand Vilnius Resort, located on a golf course on the outskirts of the Lithuanian capital, were a universe away from the front lines in Ukraine’s Kherson and Donbas regions. And while the slogan of the Free Russia Congress was “Be brave like Ukraine”, this was a gathering of Russians who have fled their country for fear of what Mr Putin’s regime might do to them. Overwhelming the three-day gathering was the knowledge that – while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been hailed as a hero for refusing to leave Kyiv – many Russian dissidents who stood up to them are either dead or imprisoned by their government. Protesters take part in an anti-Putin rally in the central Arbat district in Moscow, March 10, 2012. A poster with Putin reads: “Another 12 years? Thanks, no!” ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty Images The unity Mr. Zelensky brought to his country also remains elusive. On Wednesday, as the conference in Vilnius began under the white, blue-and-white anti-war flag adopted by the Free Russia political movement, another press conference was held outside Kyiv under the same banner, by a group claiming to represent the armed Russians. resistance to Mr. Putin. Free Russia (Legion), which appears to represent at least some Russian defectors in Ukraine, has signed a “declaration of cooperation” with an entity billing the National Republican Army, or NRA – a previously unheard-of formation it claims carried out the brazen killing by Daria Dugina last month in Moscow. Ms Dugina, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, a prominent Russian nationalist and supporter of the invasion of Ukraine, was killed on August 20 by a bomb planted under the driver’s seat of her car. The new group was fronted by Ilya Ponomarev, a former Russian parliamentarian who regularly attended previous Free Russia meetings. Representatives in Vilnius, however, said he now had nothing to do with their team. Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and veteran opponent of Mr. Putin who founded the Congress of Free Russia, told The Globe and Mail that Mr. Ponomarev was “a clown” with “zero political support.” Oleksiy Baranovskiy, a spokesman for Mr. Illarionov’s group, responded to messages sent to The Globe that opposition members gathered in Vilnius were “weak and cowardly” who spoke loudly of their opposition to the Kremlin but took no action to support it. “It is easy to sit under the protection of NATO and be skeptical. But we are at war here,” Mr. Baranowski said. There is no evidence that the NRA played a role in Ms. Dugina’s murder. Russia blamed Ukrainian intelligence services for carrying out the attack, also without substantial evidence. Meanwhile, allies of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny also stayed away from the Free Russia Congress, saying the meeting would do nothing to advance the goal of ousting Mr Putin. “I don’t know why they do these kinds of events. I don’t see how they relate to Russian politics,” said Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s chief of staff, who is also based in Vilnius. “Of course, we all want regime change in Russia. But we have our plans and we are doing something to achieve this regime change. … We don’t think attending certain conferences helps that.” Russian opposition activist and blogger Alexei Navalny is arrested by police on October 27, 2012 during a protest organized by around 200 people in central Moscow.ANDREY SMIRNOV/AFP/Getty Images Mr Volkov also distanced himself from the fledgling armed group, saying it was difficult to discern who was really behind the organization and its sudden desire for public recognition. “The so-called army is a farce.” The row reveals how dramatically the opposition has collapsed since the tumultuous days of 2012, when mass street protests in Moscow and other cities briefly threatened Mr. Putin’s hold on power. Since then, the movement’s ranks have been decimated by the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, a leading liberal politician, and the jailing of prominent protest leaders such as Mr Navalny, Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza. The remnants of the opposition are largely in exile, fighting over how to proceed. The Free Russia movement, founded in 2016, initially sought to keep the country’s democrats united and build on the momentum of ongoing protests against Mr Putin’s rule. But representatives in Vilnius told The Globe that there is now a deep rift between Mr. Volkov and Mr. Kasparov, with the former insisting that Mr. Navalny — who was clearly the country’s most popular opposition politician against his arrest last year––he should be viewed as a leader of the movement even while behind bars. Mr Navalny, 46, survived a 2020 poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent, only to be arrested after returning to Russia after treatment abroad. He faces a further seven years in prison for a fraud conviction widely seen as a Kremlin-made scheme to punish the anti-corruption activist for his political activities. Mr Kasparov, 59, this week accused Navalny’s followers of having “the very strange mentality of a sect, a closed circle that doesn’t want to take part in events put on by other members of the opposition”. While Mr. Ponomarev’s group favors armed action, Mr. Navalny’s followers say they are waiting for the right moment to launch a new internal challenge focused first on securing their leader’s release from prison. Representatives in Vilnius, meanwhile, favor building ties with Western governments and working with them to increase economic pressure on the Kremlin. “Putin will stop when he runs out of money. So the question is, how do we make him run out of money?” Bill Browder, the American financier who has become one of Mr. Putin’s most prominent international critics, said in mock comments at the forum. Other speakers included Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former political prisoner in Russia, and Michael McFaul, a former US ambassador to Moscow, as well as representatives of the governments of Lithuania, Latvia and Poland. There have been repeated calls for further sanctions against Moscow, as well as a global effort to lower oil and gas prices in order to reduce the Kremlin’s ability to raise new capital. Mr McFaul suggested that all members of Mr Putin’s United Russia party should be sanctioned by Western governments as a way of encouraging them to abandon the movement in favor of the Kremlin. Analysis: Russia’s war devastated Ukraine – but shattered Moscow’s boldest geopolitical ambitions Analysis: Chaos is the Kremlin’s ally in its confrontation with the West One of the most heated debates was whether there should be a blanket ban on Russian travel to the European Union, as several European leaders have recently proposed. Mr Kasparov, who reportedly acquired Croatian citizenship several years ago, argued that Russians should only be allowed to enter the EU if they left Russia permanently and was willing to sign a statement denouncing Mr Putin’s government and the war in Ukraine. The rally’s physical distance from Moscow – some 900km from the Kremlin walls that the opposition rallied outside in 2012 – underlined how much ground the democrats have lost over the past decade as Mr Putin tightened his grip. He also underlined how difficult it will be for the exiles to influence what happens next in their country. Yevgeniya Chirikova, another key leader of the 2012 protests, said she remained optimistic. Rather than worry about divisions in the opposition, he said he was inspired by the new generation of activists he met this week while moderating two sessions on how civil society can resist a totalitarian regime. Ms Chirikova said the death on Tuesday of Mikhail Gorbachev, the leader who presided over the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, reminded her how quickly a repressive state can unravel. “I remember being at school and being taught how great grandfather Lenin was, and after a month we were learning about the Gulag and reading Solzhenitsyn. It happened once, it can happen again,” said the 46-year-old environmental activist. “We just don’t know when the window of opportunity will come.” Our Morning Update and Evening Update newsletters are written by Globe editors, giving you a concise summary of the day…