Russia’s threatened opposition has gathered in Brussels this week to plot a return to democracy, while Vladimir Putin’s main rivals are either in prison or exiled and wrangling over how to move forward.
Far from uniting Russia’s liberal wing, the Ukraine war has deepened existing rifts and added new controversies, such as support for Moscow’s military defeat and Kiev’s reparations demands, which some see as politically toxic among Russians.
“They have these infighting, maybe it will take some time,” said Andrius Kubilius, a Lithuanian lawmaker who invited opposition groups to the European Parliament this week. “It would be great if they could show more unity around some kind of strategy.”
While the EU had hoped to bring them together, divisions were again on display when followers of the jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny refused to take part in parliamentary events.
Navalny’s longtime chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, said the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation, which operates in Lithuania, declined an invitation to the meeting because they were afraid of confronting opposition activists who disagreed with its views. “Together in the same boat”.
The European Union, which sent top officials to the meeting, is trying to persuade the opposition to develop a convincing plan for democracy and rally Russians against the war. “We want to work with Russia, but with a different Russia,” said Michael Siebert, director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia at the EU’s foreign service.
But opposition groups remain divided on how to achieve a different Russia and who should lead it.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and now Putin’s most prominent rival since Navalny, has accused Navalny’s group of perpetuating a “conflict situation”.
“In their minds, there are only leaders,” Khodorkovsky said in an interview. “It doesn’t fit with their worldview that you can have many leaders — this room is full of them.”
Navalny, 47, first rose to prominence in the early 2010s largely by ignoring the opposition’s internal squabbles and focusing on building a vibrant, web-savvy campaign to expose corruption.
Unlike his rivals, he mostly avoids Western embassy gatherings and travels to European conferences, insisting that focusing on the real concerns of Russians gives him more legitimacy.
In 2021, he returned to Moscow from Berlin, recovering after being poisoned with a nerve agent, which he blamed on Putin. Immediately upon his return he was arrested and his organization banned.
Anyone linked to Navalny’s group or protesting the war could face arrest – a move that has made it difficult for his group to hold rallies that drew hundreds of thousands of people across the country just two years ago. Last Sunday, only a handful of supporters took to the streets to wish Navalny a happy birthday.
Vladimir Milov, an informal adviser to Navalny but not a member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, said, “They have enormous political capital, and it was done with blood, sweat and tears.” developed”, and the possibility of being part of a multitude of opposition groups simply did not appeal to them.
Khodorkovsky – who spent most of the 50-minute interview criticizing Navalny’s team – said the difference was “an alliance of the Revolutionary Party and the Popular Front”, as it was before the October Revolution of 1917. Same for Russia.
“We don’t know of any cases where a revolutionary party came to power and eventually achieved democracy,” Khodorkovsky said. “With the Popular Front, it doesn’t always happen, but it happens quite often.”
Despite Khodorkovsky’s efforts to build a broader coalition by reaching out to younger activists, he is not immune to the squabbles.
At another closed-door forum in Vilnius recently, attended by both he and Navalny’s team, a close ally of Khodorkovsky yelled at Volkov for thinking he was being slighted until The host took his microphone away. Khodorkovsky’s YouTube broadcasts have so far failed to match Navalny’s audience.
Still, Khodorkovsky said the war puts Navalny’s team on an equal footing with the rest of the opposition. “I’m not against impotence. It’s great to want to work with someone in Russia. But we can see from (the small rally in support of the navy) that they can’t do it under a totalitarian regime,” Khodorkovs said. Key said.
“They’re in the same position . . . as everyone else. The only difference is we’re not ready for supporters to be exposed (retaliated in Russia),” he added.
Oleksiy Arestovich, a former senior Ukrainian official and popular commentator on Russian-language YouTube, implored attendees to bridge their differences. “I talked a lot with the Russian opposition, and every two sentences I started complaining about other members of the Russian opposition,” Arestovich said. “If you have a common goal, like an open, democratic Russia, that should be enough of a basis for joint efforts.”
Some European officials hope that the Russian opposition will follow the example of the Belarusian opposition and create a unified platform and central office to lobby Westerners on Russia’s behalf and help the anti-war diaspora. But no such steps were taken immediately when the Brussels meeting ended.
EU lawmaker Kubilius warned that all parties could be displaced by the developments.
“When a revolution starts, it can come out of nowhere and it’s hard to predict who will be the leader.”