The fact that the Russian Federation is going through a very delicate moment today – isolated from the rest of the world, with a suffering economy, huge spending on the army, dominated by special services, with a totalitarian regime and hundreds of thousands of citizens wanting to escape from mobilization, and in almost 10 months of war in Ukraine tens of thousands have already died – it’s no secret. Depression and anxiety became dominant in society, the war left its indelible mark on everyone. In these conditions, Russians in the Russian Federation and in the diaspora are increasingly thinking about what their country will be like in the post-Putin era. If things are left to their own devices, won’t an even more authoritarian leader, backed by an even more violent regime, come to power? Change from within, through free elections, is practically impossible. Navalny is in prison, with limited opportunities to communicate with the outside world. Well-known opponents of the Putin regime, such as Khodorkovsky or Kasparov, are abroad and trying to create a united opposition. Several Russian-language media channels broadcast from the Baltic states, but Russian citizens’ access to alternative propaganda messages is currently extremely limited.

As the Russian Federation plunges into war in Ukraine without achieving any of its initial goals, one question is increasingly being asked: What will the Russian Federation look like after Putin? In addition, the question arises, will the transition to a democratic regime be carried out and how will it be achieved?

In November, the first meeting of Vladimir Putin’s opponents called “The First Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia” took place in Yablonn, in the immediate vicinity of Warsaw. The location was not chosen by chance: it is the site of the 1989 round table talks between the communist authorities and the anti-communist opposition, which led to a change in the political regime and the organization of the first free elections. The name was chosen to emphasize that it is a “proto-parliament” that will replace the current one when Putin’s regime falls. The reason for choosing such a name is that neither Khodorkovsky nor Kasparov were present at the Yablonna meeting, and several anti-Putin organizations contested the legitimacy of the meeting. The organizer of this meeting was Ilya Ponomaryov, the only Russian member of the State Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and who later went into hiding in Kyiv. Ponomaryov became famous in August of this year after the murder of Daria Dugina, when he publicly stated that members of the secret partisan army, which operated in the territory of the Russian Federation, were behind this murder. However, such a group did not undertake the murder, and thus Ponomariov lost credibility among other opponents of Putin.

However, it is very interesting to present the vision of Putin’s opponents, what the post-Putin Russian Federation would look like. All participants from Jablonna spoke in favor of removing Vladimir Putin from power as soon as possible by any means. As the participant of this meeting noted, from the organization Express yourself! based in London, adopted Independent Kyiv, “the war in Ukraine and the prevention of war in Europe can only happen if Putin and his regime are removed from power.” In this regard, the document adopted in Yablon calls for immediate peace, the demobilization of the Russian army, and the withdrawal of Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine, including Crimea. The first post-conflict act, in this vision, would be to establish a war crimes investigation team and pay compensation to Ukrainians who suffered from the war, as well as prevent any future “war of aggression.” Note that Putin’s opponents do not mention either the Hague Tribunal or the Special Tribunal for Ukraine. Would they prefer that Russian justice resolve the issue of responsibility for war crimes? This aspect is not clear. The statement of the meeting only says that “we are ready to coordinate actions on behalf of Russia to work together to identify and punish those guilty of war crimes in Ukraine.”

In this vision, the “deputization” of the Russian Federation would follow, lustration of all those who supported the war in Ukraine – FSB officers or journalists enslaved by the authorities. This lustration will be carried out by a special commission, which can decide to decriminalize some people who did not commit war crimes, if there is enough evidence for this, the commission will work on the basis of the archives of the special services, which will be declassified. to see the responsibility of every official in resolving and continuing the war in Ukraine is an extremely ambitious goal.

One of the big problems of the Russian Federation at the moment is excessive centralization: the regions are not autonomous at all, and the authorities in Moscow decide in the smallest details. Yablonnaya’s document contains a radical proposal to remedy this situation: the dissolution of the Russian Federation and its replacement by “parliamentary democracy.” “Nations” who want it will voluntarily join this new state. Unfortunately, this is the whole vision of changing the political regime. Most likely, the authors of the text were inspired by the collapse of the USSR – but this historical episode should have made them think more about the real possibilities of change, and especially about the limits of change. In fact, all the transitions in Russia of the last century were based on a firm promise of a decisive break with the past, but none of them were implemented. However, there is one undeniable aspect: the current Russian Federation is based on inequality between the various constituent parts – republics such as Dagestan or Buryatia have suffered much more from mobilization than others – and this fact must be taken into account in any attempt to change the current political regime.

There is a document from Yablonnaya, in a vision Financial Times, deficit of the economic section. It is about analyzing the results of privatization – a poorly managed process, because it allowed the emergence of oligarchs, rather than a functioning market economy. Some elements related to the economy are missing from the document. Opposition to the controversial pension reform initiated by Vladimir Putin in 2020 is exposed, but the problem of managing the pension system, due to scarce resources and declining birth rates, remains regardless of who is in power in the Russian Federation.

The document also proposes the creation of an “Anti-Totalitarian Union” that would oppose not only the Putin regime, but also the Lukashenka regime in Belarus, given the fact that many Belarusian opponents in exile took part in the meeting in Yablon.

This document is neither a detailed management program nor a well-thought-out strategy to remove Vladimir Putin from power. However, this is the first step into a completely unknown territory – what a post-Putin Russia will look like. Despite some ambiguities such as these, the document offers a new vision of how regime change in Moscow should take place. An alternative to Prigozhin and Kadyrov exists and, as we can see, is expressed publicly.

It is true that the regime changes in Russia took place on the basis of the ideas of political opponents in exile, such as Lenin, who in early 1917 believed that the Bolshevik revolution had no chance. Everything depends on the international situation, which may or may not be favorable for changing the political regime in the Russian Federation. Read the entire article and leave comments on Contributors.ro