Russia’s downtrodden opposition met last week in Brussels, Belgium, to plot a path back to democracy, while Vladimir Putin’s main rivals are imprisoned or exiled and bickering over how to move forward.
Rather than unite Russian liberals, the war in Ukraine deepened existing divisions and added to controversies, such as support for a military defeat by Moscow and the Ukrainian government’s demands for reparations, which some consider politically toxic for Russians.
“They have these infighting, and maybe it will take some time,” said Andrius Kubilius, a Lithuanian MEP who invited Russian opposition groups to the European Parliament last week. “It would be nice if they could show more unity around some sort of strategy.”
While the European Union (EU) had hoped to bring them together, divisions became even clearer when allies of jailed anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalni, Russia’s most popular opposition leader, declined to attend the event at the European Parliament. Navalni’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, which operates outside Lithuania, declined invitations to the conference for fear of being “in the same boat” as rival activists who do not share their views, according to Leonid Volkov, Navalni’s former chief of staff.
The EU, which sent top officials to the conference, tried to convince the opposition to come up with a rational plan for democracy and rally Russians against the war. “We want to work with Russia, but a different Russia,” said Michael Siebert, director of the EU’s diplomatic service for Eastern Europe and Central Asia. But opposition groups remain divided on how to reach that other Russia.
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia’s richest man and now Putin’s most prominent opponent after Navalny, accused his group of perpetuating “conflicting situations”. “In their minds, there can only be one leader,” he says. “It doesn’t fit their worldview that there could be multiple leaders.”
Navalni, 47, rose to fame in the early 2010s largely for ignoring the opposition’s infighting and focusing on creating a dynamic and active Internet movement to expose corruption.
Unlike his rivals, he avoided parties at Western embassies and trips to European conferences, insisting that focusing on Russians’ real concerns gave him more legitimacy.
In 2021, he returned to Moscow from Berlin, where he was recovering after being poisoned with a nerve agent that he blamed on Putin. He was immediately arrested upon his return, and his organization banned.
Anyone who joins Navalni’s group or protests against the war risks arrest – a move that has made it difficult for his group to hold rallies that, two years ago, drew hundreds of thousands of people across the country. Only a small number of followers took to the streets last Sunday to wish Navalni a happy birthday.
Vladimir Milov, who advises Navalny informally but is not part of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, said “they have this huge political capital, developed with blood, sweat and tears”, and that the prospect of being just one of many opposition groups is simply not it’s interesting for them.
Khodorkovsky, who devoted most of his 50-minute interview to criticizing Navalni’s team, said the difference is between a “revolutionary party and a popular front coalition”, as in Russia before the October 1917 revolution.” We know of no case where a revolutionary party took power and democracy emerged in the end,” Khodorkovsky said. “With a popular front, this doesn’t always happen, but quite often.”
While Khodorkovsky has made an effort to build a broader coalition, including younger activists, he has not been immune to disputes either. At another recent closed-door forum in Vilnius, Lithuania, which he and Navalni’s team attended, a close Khodorkovsky ally heavily criticized Volkov over perceived mistakes, until the moderator pulled his microphone. Khodorkovsky’s YouTube streams have so far failed to match Navalni’s audience.
However, Khodorkovsky said the war had put Navalni’s team on par with the rest of the opposition. “I have nothing against impotence. Wanting to work with people who are in Russia is great. But we can see [pela pequena manifestação pró-Navalni] that they can’t do that either under a totalitarian regime,” Khodorkovsky said. “They’re in the same position as everyone else. The only difference is that we are not ready to expose supporters [da represália na Rússia].”
Oleksi Arestovich, a former senior official in Ukraine and a popular commentator on Russian-language YouTube, implored conference participants to resolve differences. “I talk to the opposition all the time, and every sentence starts with a complaint about another member of the Russian opposition,” he says. “If they have a common goal, an open and democratic Russia, that should be a sufficient basis for them to act together.”
Some European officials hoped that the opposition could follow their Belarusian counterparts and create a united platform and central office to lobby Westerners on behalf of Russians and help the anti-war diaspora. But the Brussels event ended without an immediate prospect for such a step. Kubilius, the EU legislator, warned that all parties could be surprised by events. “When the revolution starts, and it can come out of nowhere, it’s hard to predict who will be the leader.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
