Russian Political Emigration Increasingly Divided with Only Now Isolated Radicals a Possible Ally of Ethnic and Regional Groups, Sidorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 3 – Russian émigré politics is as fissiparous as ever with the mainstream middle increasingly at odds with more radical groups which are the only ones prepared to cooperate at all with the ethno-national and regional groups, a pattern that makes the unity of opposition to Putin among the emigres ever less likely, Kharun Sidorov says.

            The Prague-based analyst traces the ins and outs of this process in a detailed article for the IdelReal portal. At its latest meeting in Vilnius, the Russian émigré opposition to Putin and his war in Ukraine was unable to overcome divisions both within its own ranks, between all of them and a radical Russian group in Ukraine, and between the Russian groups and the ethno-national and regional activists (idelreal.org/a/32014204.html).

            The Vilnius meeting brought together three groups – the Free Russia Forum, Mikhail Khodorkovsky and his group and the followers of imprisoned Aleksey Navalny. They proved incapable of going beyond having such meetings being a place for discussions and becoming the nucleus of an integrated organization, a Congress of Free Russia.

            But an even more important divide opened between these three groups on the one hand and the Russians in Ukraine led by Ilya Ponomaryov who took responsibility for the assassination of Darya Dugina and called on Russians to join him in fighting Putin’s army, something the other three groups are not prepared to do.

            More seriously, this divide also affected the willingness of the Vilnius groups to interact with ethnic and regional activists. In the past, the forum had had sessions for them at its meeting, but that period is now past. And it is unlikely to return because the Vilnius groups see no point in talking with them especially since Ponomaryov is willing to do so, Sidorov says.

            The leaders of the ethno-national and regional movements are skeptical of any Russian who says he wants to work with them, the analyst suggests; but for the present, they appear less opposed to speaking with someone who is prepared to reach out to them, especially as the attitudes against them among the others appear to be hardening.