Can Freed Russian Dissidents Help Energize Opposition Movement?
Among Russians who oppose Vladimir V. Putin and his brutal Ukraine invasion, hopes are high that the Russian dissidents freed last week as part of a prisoner exchange with the West will breathe new life into a fragmented opposition force.
But if it promises an injection of energy into a movement struggling to effect change inside of Russia, it reignites a question older than the Russian Revolution — where is the more effective place to advocate for democratic change: from a prison cell inside of Russia, or in exile?
Either way, the challenge is daunting. For years, decades even, Russia’s opposition has been divided and beset with infighting; the Ukraine invasion has only exacerbated the grievances. And that was before the most influential opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, died in an Arctic penal colony in February.
The most prominent dissidents who remained — Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, both freed last week — were serving long sentences, but they gained credibility from their willingness to forego the comforts of exile to speak their minds as inmates in Russia’s harsh prison system.
They were exchanged along with Andrei S. Pivovarov, who ran Open Russia, an organization founded by the exiled former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and three regional politicians with ties to Mr. Navalny. Its mission is to support Russian civil society.
In an interview over the weekend, Mr. Yashin lamented that he had not wanted to leave Russia, and that his release, which he called an “illegal expulsion,” deprived his words of the moral authority they carried from prison. But his supporters expressed cautious optimism in the days after the exchange, because of his unifying power and that of Mr. Kara-Murza, who won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for commentary for columns he had written in prison for The Washington Post.
Their release has raised hope in the country among antiwar Russians. “For the first time since the beginning of the war, there was hope for change,” Nataliya, 40, a painter in southwestern Russia, said in a text message. Like others inside Russia interviewed for this article, she asked that her last name be withheld because of possible repercussions.
Anna Karetnikova, an exiled human rights activist and former senior prison official in the Moscow region, worked with Mr. Yashin in the opposition movement in Russia. She said she believed that his years behind bars made him a stronger politician. “Maybe he will help to overcome the existing divisions in the opposition,” she said.
Mr. Yashin was warned when he left that if he tried to return to Russia, he would end up exactly like Mr. Navalny. But there are people who have high hopes that once political change is possible, he could return and assume a leadership role.
“I followed Yashin’s activities closely before he was imprisoned and was very glad to see his name on the exchange list,” said Semyon, an 18-year-old high school student in St. Petersburg. “My only remaining hope is for him,” he continued. “Some oppositionists have discredited themselves, therefore Yashin looks like the most sympathetic person who is able to represent an alternative to the Putin regime.”
That’s an opinion that Kremlin loyalists are working hard to snuff out. Pro-government propagandists seized on last week’s swap as evidence that the exiled Russians were not real patriots.
Dmitri A. Medvedev, a former president and prime minister of Russia, called the Russians heading west “traitors,” saying he wished they would have “rotted in a dungeon or died in prison.” He added that the exchange was worth it, however, because “our own people who worked for the Fatherland” had come home.
“These people who left us — little animals — good riddance!” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the Kremlin-controlled news outlet Russia Today, said on a talk show on Sunday.
The goal, analysts say, is to render the exchanged dissidents irrelevant in Russia — the greatest fear of any politician, especially one in exile.
“Of course, it is more effective to engage in politics when you are in the country,” Ekaterina Duntsova, who was barred from the ballot in presidential elections earlier this year but remains in Russia, said in a series of audio messages. “Those who remain in Russia are making a conscious choice. Without a connection to the Russian reality, it is very difficult to continue opposition activities. We look at those who have left and see how they gradually drift away from understanding what is happening here.”
Aleksandr Kynev, a Russian political analyst, said that the authorities have realized that the opposition is weakened abroad, so “they are thus actually squeezing people out of the country” who don’t agree with the Kremlin, in a bid to weaken them as well.
Still, the former politicians could make an important contribution, said Ekaterina Schulmann, a Russian political scientist. She used the term “antiwar resistance” to describe what the exiles can do — negotiating prisoners swaps, helping people to flee the country, influencing Western policy on sanctions and maintaining contact with those staying in Russia.
They could do this, she said, despite the fractures in the opposition, which is so plagued by infighting that it was evident even during the hours of the swap: A Russian opposition politician, Maksim Katz, accused members of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Mr. Navalny’s organization, of trying to create a rift between him and Mr. Yashin.
In what seemed like a show of unity, members of Mr. Navalny’s foundation, best known by its initials F.B.K., were on the scene in Germany when the plane carrying Mr. Yashin and other dissidents landed. One of the first photos published of Mr. Yashin in Germany shows him with key members of Mr. Navalny’s team, Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh.
“I hope that the opportunity to create a united political bloc together with F.B.K. will not be missed and that the opposition activity will become livelier than before,” said Elena, a 37 year old financial manager from Ekaterinburg.
Mr. Yashin said in an interview he had no plans to try to join any opposition group, but that he wanted to work with all forces who “oppose the war and seek the release of political prisoners.”
“I am going to do practical antiwar human rights work and will try to show what is possible by example, including that you can be a Russian oppositionist and not quarrel with anyone. I hope I can do it.”
The Kremlin’s counter to this is to paint the newly freed politicians as anti-Russian agents working for Western adversaries. A recent headline in the pro-government Komsomolskaya Pravda read: “Agents of influence of foreign intelligence services are returning to their bosses.”
The fact that the two primary countries involved in the exchange were the U.S. and Germany — both stolid supporters of Ukraine — makes their argument more convincing to a lot of Russians.
“Unfortunately, many people in Russia perceive all this as the Americans pulling out their own: not only their citizens, but also their own who worked for them,” said Marina Litvinovich, a Russian opposition activist.
Many Russians see Ukraine as the collateral damage in a war started by the U.S. and waged against Russia, she said.
“For those people who find it difficult to recognize Ukrainians as enemies, it is easier for them to recognize Americans as enemies, whom they have never seen in their lives and whom they do not know and who are alien and very distant to them,” she said.
Some have expressed hope that if and when political change does come, the released men would be ready to lead the country. But Mr. Kynev, the political analyst, said he doubted that opposition figures sent abroad could make a return to political life whenever Russia enters into a period of political change again.
“The places will just be occupied when the changes start, and people will emerge from within the system,” he said. “No one will reserve any special places for those who have left. When they return, it will be a different country.”
Valerie Hopkins reported from Cologne, Germany, Ekaterina Bodyagina from Berlin, and Alina Lobzina from London.
#Freed #Russian #Dissidents #Energize #Opposition #Movement