by Stefano Caprio

The creation of a platform at the Council of Europe for dialogue with the democratic forces in Russia that oppose Vladimir Putin's regime is hampered by internal divisions between the various groups, including criticism of the Anti-Corruption Fund created by Alexei Navalny. Vladimir Kara-Murza's appeal: ‘Every political prisoner must be able to count on not being forgotten’.

A platform for dialogue with Russia's democratic forces, which oppose Vladimir Putin's regime and its warlike and imperialist pretensions, has been formed in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).

In the resolution, voted by 80 parliamentarians, the PACE intends to transform communication with the Russian opposition and civil initiatives ‘from scattered formats to structured dialogue’, thereby helping Russian groups abroad who are unable to find real coordination among themselves, as was the Soviet tradition of dissidents in the last century, divided between the grand visions of Solzhenitsyn, Bukovsky, Sinyavsky, Maksimov and many others.

The composition of the Russian delegation to the PACE will be defined by the organisation's office, and one of the decisive elements will be the recognition of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine, as well as Georgia and Moldova, which have also been deprived of their territories by Russia.

Another criterion for participation will be the signing of the “Berlin Declaration”, approved by Russian opponents and activists in April 2023 to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, defining Putin's regime as “illegitimate and criminal”.

The organisations currently under consideration are Mikhail Khodorkovsky's group, Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Fund (Fbk), Natalia Argo and Vladimir Kara-Murza's Free Russia Foundation, Garry Kasparov's “Free Russia Forum” and various organisations representing Russia's minority peoples.

However, the FBK did not sign the Berlin Declaration, and in the PACE's own considerations, the group founded by Russia's most prominent opposition figure, who died in a prison camp in March 2024, attracted everyone's attention with actions “that have drawn criticism within the Russian opposition forces”.

This controversy is directed at several of Navalny's followers, although so far it has not directly affected his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, who is trying to represent the ability to unite all Russians at home and in exile who desire a “happy Russia of the future”, as her husband Alexei stated.

Navalny's top aide, Leonid Volkov, responded by criticising “the crude and vile report by Representative Kross”, accusing Estonian MP Eerik-Niiles Kross of discriminating against various opponents among Russian exiles in Europe.

Russians abroad are debating the actual importance of the PACE assembly, whether it serves only “to acquire an official status to put on business cards”, or whether it will be possible to obtain real support for the future of the country, as presidential candidate Svetlana Tikhanovskaya is trying to do for Belarus, who has also been in exile since 2020 after the repression of Alexander Lukashenko.

The most authoritative of the Russian opposition figures abroad, however, appears to be Vladimir Kara-Murza, whom the main news agencies turn to in order to understand what can be achieved by this activity of Russians in European institutions. In statements he made to Currentime, he said that ‘the Council of Europe is the largest and most historic pan-European institution, with 46 member countries’, many more than the EU itself, and that Russia was excluded from it after its invasion of Ukraine.

Currently, only two European countries are not represented in the PACE: Russia and Belarus. It is an institution that goes beyond the very aims of the EU, looking at the perspective of the entire continent, as its founders desired immediately after the Second World War.

The only true dictatorships in Europe are therefore those in Moscow and Minsk, and the difficulty in communicating with them is partially alleviated by opposition representatives, in order to imagine an important future for all, considering that the territories of Russia and Belarus constitute almost half of the entire continental territory.

When Resolution No. 300 was passed, which in March 2022 excluded the Russians from the Council, the assembly had already expressed its desire to “continue a dialogue with the democratic forces and civil society in Russia”.

According to Kara-Murza, “it is no exaggeration to consider this a historic decision”, given that the countries of the two totalitarian regimes still have a voice in Europe, which constitutes “a bridge to the future, to reintegrate post-Putin Russia and post-Lukashenko Belarus into the space of law and brotherhood of European peoples”.

Another activist from Navalny's group, Lyubov Sobol, says that the Russian delegation to the PACE is important in helping Russian emigrants, who find themselves in a far from easy situation after fleeing Russia. Kara-Murza believes that this help is certainly important, but what really matters is ‘the activation of international accountability mechanisms for the war crimes Russia is committing in Ukraine’.

It is also important to express genuine support for the many Russian opponents currently detained in camps, whose numbers are growing daily and now exceed 1,700, more than the number of Soviet dissidents in the 1980s. Just a few days ago, the vice-president of the liberal party Yabloko, Maksim Kruglov, was imprisoned in a concentration camp for anti-war posts published in April 2022.

Among the initiatives of the PACE, a commission on the problems of political prisoners has also been set up, with which Sergei Davidis, the Russian representative of the Memorial association for the memory of Soviet and current repressions, banned in Russia two years ago, met.

One of the issues to be addressed is precisely that of the political persecution of Putin's regime, which is increasingly resembling the “Stalinist terror” of the 1930s, a problem that takes a back seat to the tragedies of war, but which deeply wounds Russian society as a whole.

Kara-Murza comments from his expertise as a historian, recalling that “all major political changes in Russia have usually happened suddenly and unexpectedly”, as was the case with the collapse of the tsarist regime in 1917 and the end of the Soviet regime in 1991, so “none of us knows when a new window of democratic change will open, but we know that it will open”.

Since this could happen “quickly and for a short time”, the politician warns that “we must act decisively and immediately”.

Many groups opposed to the Moscow regime are trying to imagine this future, as in Memorial's recent report entitled “The 100 days after Putin”, which discusses constitutional reforms, new electoral mechanisms, and the need for a lustratsija, i.e. a historical review of what happened, which was sorely lacking at the end of the USSR.

Above all, it is important to consider Russia's reintegration into European institutions, as this is fundamental to the concept of a democratic state, especially in light of populist and sovereigntist tendencies around the world, from America to China, Turkey, India and many other countries.

Russia has never been a member of either the EU or NATO, but it has been a member of the Council of Europe for 26 years, since 1996, participating in the legislative space for the respect of human rights.

Kara-Murza recalls “how important it is for a political prisoner to know that they have not been forgotten” and calls for the involvement of all Russians abroad, including those not registered in the groups currently standing as candidates to participate in the PACE assembly.

There are six members of the Belarusian delegation, and it remains to be seen how many Russians there will be, whose population is 14 times larger than that of Belarus, and when Russia still participated in the PACE, it had 18 delegates. The important thing is that the new delegation ‘is as open as possible,’ say representatives of the various groups.

The doors remain open to all Russians abroad, and Kara-Murza himself recalls that “I was in a labour camp when the Berlin Declaration was approved, I didn't even know what it was”, suggesting that we should not get too hung up on official statements.

What matters is the approval of the fundamental principles in support of Ukraine, “without too much political manipulation of the formalities of the documents”, uniting all Russians who oppose the war and Putin's new totalitarianism and are trying to imagine the possible future of Russia.

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