Opponents of Vladimir Putin from the left and extreme right of the political spectrum united in Kyiv. They are starting to create a structure under the auspices of Ilya Ponomarev, a former deputy, reports Le Monde, cited by Rador.

At the center of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Russian opponents of Vladimir Putin are trying to ignite the idea of ​​an armed struggle with the master of the Kremlin. In Kyiv, the political leader of this movement, 47-year-old ex-people’s deputy Ilya Ponomaryov, wants to “destroy the Russian Empire and kill Putin.”

Oleksiy Baranovsky, a journalist and lawyer who works with him, is no less frank when he talks about his dream to see the “Kremlin on fire.” To achieve this, they want to create both an army in exile and a partisan movement on Russian soil.

The Russian insurgent movement was officially born on August 31, 2022, when the “Irpin Declaration” was signed, which united the Legion “Freedom of Russia”, a volunteer unit of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and the “National Republican Army” (NRA), an underground guerrilla network in Russia.

Two armed groups accepted Ilya Ponomarev to become their political coordinator. A third group, the Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK), also linked to the Ukrainian armed forces, emerged that day but ultimately preferred to maintain its autonomy.

Ilya Ponomaryov was a member of Russia’s parliament, the State Duma, from 2007 to 2016, where he was the only deputy to vote against the 2014 annexation of Crimea. After leaving for the United States due to persecution, he was subjected in Moscow, he finally settled in Ukraine.

After the invasion on February 24, 2022, he spoke on behalf of the mysterious “National Republican Army”, making statements – often with unverified information – on behalf of Russian rebels, claiming attacks on recruitment centers or railways, and the murders of Daria Dugin, a far-right activist, daughter ultra-nationalist and ideologue of imperialism Oleksandr Dugin.

Four battalions

Center-left Ilya Ponomarev did not create a new political party, his ambition was to unite opponents of Vladimir Putin from the broadest possible spectrum of the Russian political scene, united by their commitment to armed struggle. Although he is kept at a distance by the opposition organization of Alexei Navalny, who advocates peaceful demonstrations, he claims to be in dialogue with the movements of other anti-Putin figures, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Garry Kasparov, who did not sign the Declaration. Irpin”.

“We all agree that Russia should become a democratic republic, but Khodorkovsky does not want to appear too close to Ukraine, and Kasparov is against violence,” commented Ponomaryov.

In addition to the informal “Political Center” created in Kyiv, supporters of the armed struggle organized two meetings of the “parliament in exile” in Warsaw, open to all former elected members of the federal, regional and local assemblies of Russia, and which, according to its statement, gathered 59 deputies (November 2022), then 76 of them (February 2023).

However, Ponomaryov’s nascent legitimacy is more connected to the fact that he was elected political leader by the “Freedom of Russia” legion.

Formed in the days following the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the group, led by a certain “Legat” who never appears in public, now has four battalions of volunteers recruited alongside the Ukrainian armed forces through the International Legion.

The fighters are either citizens of Russia who lived in Ukraine before the war, or Russian soldiers who deserted, or men who arrived illegally from Russia last year. According to Ponomaryov, “Russian Freedom” will gather “about 1,000 fighters”, and “two battalions at the front and two battalions in training”.

In the popularity contest, the Russian Freedom Legion this month edged out the Russian Volunteer Corps (VRK) in an attack on Bryansk claimed by four men in camouflage uniforms who recorded two videos posted on social media. socialization.

Russian President Vladimir Putin immediately condemned the invasion of “neo-Nazi /Ukrainian” terrorists into the territory of Russia. Instead, in Kyiv, presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak called the operation a “deliberate provocation” organized by Moscow, and the head of the NSDC, Oleksiy Danilov, called it the work of “some anti-fascist militias from Russia.”

There is no official recognition

Both Ilya Ponomarev and the “Russian Volunteer Corps” confirm that the operation was carried out by the RDK. After the release of the video with the face of the unit commander in broad daylight, there was no doubt. Denys Kapustin, aka Nikitin, aka Rex, his fighting name, is a well-known figure in neo-Nazi circles in Russia and Germany, where he lived for a long time before joining Ukraine and converging with the Azov movement.

Sulfur Rex avoids contacts with both politicians and journalists, so the RDK negotiations with Ilya Ponomariov and “Russkaya Svoboda” were conducted by “Cardinal”, the pseudonym of a former lieutenant of the Russian army, who takes responsibility for the raid in the Bryansk region. “Operation /Bryansk/ was supposed to show the Russian people that they can fight,” says “Cardinal”.

Returning to the creation of the RDK and its political identity, “Cardinal” admits that “it is no secret that the unit is politically very far-right.” “No [vrem] leftist, like Ponomaryov, as a political leader. That’s why [nu am] signed the “Irpin Declaration”.

“Cardinal” confirms that the Ukrainian ultra-nationalist movement “Azov”, which is now applauded in Ukraine for its frantic resistance during the siege of Mariupol, helped the “Russian volunteer corps” created in July 2022. “Our comrades from the 98th battalion “Azov-Dnipro” met us at the front, on the edge of the Zaporizhia and Donetsk regions. This allowed us to assert ourselves little by little, until the spectacular operation in Bryansk, which had a strong response at the peak of power in Moscow.”

Kyiv, which conducts its own secret military operations in Russia through units of military intelligence and special forces, did not officially recognize the invasion of Russian volunteers into the neighboring territory. Behind the scenes, however, no one believes that crossing the border and returning to Ukraine during the day was not carried out without a green light from some level of the Ukrainian military command.

Russian insurgent units are now looking for that hypothetical future where they could fight on Russian soil. “Our goal is to provoke armed uprisings in Russia. In the long term, we want to support our Ukrainian brothers until the victory of Ukraine, and then continue the struggle in Russia,” says Oleksiy Baranovskyi.

Ukraine would become a support at the front in this struggle. “Ukrainians themselves are having discussions /among themselves/ about what role they should play in the future. Some want to break away from Russia completely, while others want to help change it,” says Ilya Ponomaryev.

The only very clear point, according to Oleksiy Baranovskyi, is that if Ukraine completes the liberation of its territory, Russian volunteers “will immediately leave the Ukrainian armed forces and become partisans in Russia.” “The Ukrainian government will not go beyond the borders of 1991, and part of our Ukrainian brothers, on the contrary, will follow us as volunteers. Because after this war, they too will have reasons to want to see the Kremlin on fire.” Le Monde (Rador takeover)

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