Russian Diaspora in US Organizes to Stop Putin Dictatorship

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 10 – As the Putin regime has increased repression, Russians in the United States have formed a new organization to stop the Putin dictatorship in Russia and promote a democratic Russia. It organizes protests at Russian diplomatic facilities, sends letters of support to political prisoners at home, and identifies property Putin allies have bought in the US.

            Like most organizations these days, its activists are linked together by a Facebook page, in this case facebook.com/4demrussiaus; but Radio Liberty journalist Dmitry Volchek spoke to activists in Washington, New York and San Francisco who described how the new Russian “Protest America” group is working against Putin (svoboda.org/a/31195474.html).

            The new American group arose, Dmitry Valuyev in Washington, Aleks Zaprozhtsev, and Mariya Boyarkina say, when people around the world were protesting in support of Aleksey Navalny on January 23. There were demonstrations in many American cities not just the three the activists represent.

            According to Valuyev, “all Russian-speaking America responded to this act of illegality” by Putin against Navalny. “In our union, there are people with great political experience. There are people who have been living here for a long time, 20 or even 25 years, and there are those who came recently.”

            We are united not only in our support of Navalny, he says, but also by a desire to see Russia flourish. Many Russians who are in the US now left their homeland precisely because Putin has made both that and the possibility of criticizing it while remaining at home ever more problematic. The Kremlin may stop us in Russia, but it can’t when we live abroad, he says.

            Boyarkina echoes his words and says the group is now hoping to unite the Russian-language diaspora throughout the entire world. As a first step, it is working on an interactive map for its Facebook page showing where protests occur and providing information about other actions.

            Zaporozhtsev says that he believes Russian demonstrations in the US have an impact not only on American attitudes but on Russian actions. After his friend Ildar Dadin was arrested in Russia, Russians in New York protested and his friend was released. And every demonstration attracts the attention and support of Americans.

            “In New York,” he continues, at times of protests, “Americans constantly approach us and say ‘Thank you. We are with you. We know who Putin is.”

            There are of course pro-Putin groups financed by Moscow who present the other side and whose members Protest America seeks both to expose and to cause them to change their minds. Sometimes they disrupt anti-Putin protests but that seldom works to their advantage, Zaporozhtsev continues.

            “In our staff,” Boyarkina adds, “there is an ‘Agents’ project. We collect information about pro-Putin groups in every American city in order to focus attention on them. If they conduct some action, we must counter them.” The staff also works hard to gather information on the property pro-Putin officials have purchased in the US to expose what is going on.

            The group also seeks “to convince the US Administration that sanctions against the Putin regime should be broadened,” with ever more of them applied to the corrupt officials near the Kremlin. That is necessary, the staffers say, because Putin and his regime threaten not only Russia but the entire world.