Kremlin critic and former oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky believes it is “natural” that Russia’s opposition is so split in its campaign against President Vladimir Putin.
Russia is in the third year of its invasion of Ukraine, domestic repression is widespread and Russia’s weakened opposition has been forced into exile, but Khodorkovsky told AFP in an interview he is determined to keep backing a coalition against Putin.
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Plagued by infighting for years, fresh scandals have further divided the various movements and individuals that are, in theory, working towards the same goal: the end of Putin’s rule.
The death of Alexei Navalny – the only person who had come close to uniting the movement – in murky circumstances in prison this year was a severe blow to the cause.
Khodorkovsky told AFP that while “putting an end to Putin’s regime” was the goal for all opposition factions, conflict within the movement is normal.
“Of course, between various parts of the Russian opposition there are discussions, conflicts, and even sometimes scandals,” Khodorkovsky said in an interview in Warsaw this week.
“But this is natural in a situation when there is an unknown amount of time until the regime is defeated,” he added.
Khodorkovsky spoke a few weeks after his role as one of the main protagonists in the opposition’s divisions was shot back into the spotlight.
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Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) accused a Khodorkovsky-linked businessman – Leonid Nevzlin – of ordering a hammer attack on one of its leading figures, Leonid Volkov who lives in Lithuania.
Khodorkovsky has strongly denied the claims he was aware of Nevzlin’s plans.
He insisted that while the opposition has various views, it “works in quite a consolidated way with regards to supporting the effort of Ukraine and fighting the Putin regime.”
‘As much as people ready’
In the latest twist in the saga, Poland last month arrested a Russian linked to Nevzlin – Anatoly Blinov – accused of being involved in the hammer attack.
“The person who presented himself as an ally turned out to be an enemy,” Navalny’s team said of the affair in a long video.
Khodorkovsky had expressed shock over the allegations. On Thursday, a day after his interview with AFP, he announced that he gave testimony to Polish prosecutors looking into the case.
Once Russia’s richest man and head of the Yukos oil company, Khodorkovsky, 61, is now based in London, from where he finances the Open Russia group that Moscow has banned.
Dressed in black and wearing thin glasses, he said he is committed to building a “coalition as much as people are ready for it” to fight the regime, which imprisoned him in 2003 for a decade.
The internal fighting risks making the opposition – already muted by the Kremlin’s censorship – even more inaudible inside Russia.
In another sign of the splits, several Russian political prisoners were released this summer as part of an East-West swap, but have since campaigned separately.
‘Difficult psychologically’
But Khodorkovsky said he sees potential in anti-Putin Russians who fled their country in protest over the invasion, hoping they will one day return home.
“A significant part of Russians today, even when they are in the West, even in relatively comfortable conditions, still want – when the possibility arises – to come back to Russia to do something to change the situation,” he said.
“As soon as the Putin regime falls. They will do everything they can to help a new democratic Russia.”
While focusing on repression at home, Russia’s opposition has struggled with its position on Ukraine, with many Ukrainian and Western voices accusing it of not doing enough to support the country devastated by Moscow’s invasion.
Khodorkovsky said building bridges between the Russian opposition and Ukrainians “is difficult purely psychologically because for many Ukrainians the feeling is that all Russians are like that.”
He said his mission was to ”convince the West and our Ukrainian friends that far from all Russians are like that. Far from all Russians support Putin.”
Regardless of the outcome of the war, he said that neither side can change their place on the map.
“Russia will still be Ukraine’s neighbor, and we still need to find those solutions that will enable us to live in peace, normally, with fair and internationally recognized borders.”
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