Opponents to Vladimir Putin, from the left or the far right, rallied the forces of kyiv. They begin to structure themselves, under the aegis of Ilia Ponomarev, an old deputy.
by Rémy Ourdan (kyiv, Special Envoy)
Nestled at the heart of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Russian opponents of Vladimir Putin are trying to bring out the idea of an armed struggle against the master of the Kremlin. In kyiv, the political leader of this movement, Ilia Ponomarev, a former 47 -year -old deputy, wants to “destroy the Russian Empire and kill Putin”. Alexei Baranovski, a journalist and lawyer who works alongside him, is no less explicit when he talks about his dream of seeing “the Kremlin in flames”. To achieve this, they want to build both an army in exile and a guerrilla movement on Russian soil.
The Russian rebellious movement was officially born on August 31, 2022, when signing a “ Irpin’s declaration e” bringing together the Legion “Russia freedom”, a unit of volunteers engaged in the Ukrainian armed forces, and the “National Republican Army” ( NRA), a network of supporters acting clandestinely in Russia. The two armed groups then accepted that hea Ponomarev became their political coordinator. A third group, the “Russian volunteer corps” (RDK), also linked to the Ukrainian armed forces, did that day an act of presence, but finally preferred to keep its autonomy.
ilia Ponomarev sat in the Russian Parliament, Duma, from 2007 to 2016, where he was the only deputy to vote against the annexation of Crimea, in 2014. After having exiled to the United States, due to Harassment of which he was the target in Moscow, he finally settled in Ukraine. After the invasion of February 24, 2022, he posed a megaphone of the mysterious “national republican army”, broadcasting press releases – to often unverifiable information – on behalf of the Russian rebels, claiming attacks of recruitment centers or railways, as well as the assassination, in the region of Moscow, Daria Douguina, an far -right activist, daughter of the ultra -nationalist and imperialist ideologist Alexandre Douguine.
Four battalions
ilia Ponomarev, from the center left for her part, did not create a political party, his ambition being to bring together opponents to Vladimir Putin from the widest possible spectrum of the Russian political scene and united by their commitment in armed struggle. If he is kept at a distance by the organization of the imprisoned opponent Alexei Navalny, who advocates peaceful demonstrations, he claims to dialogue with the movements of other anti-Putin figures, such as Mikhail Khodorkovski or Gary Kasparov, who However, have not co -signed the “Irpine Declaration”. “We agree that Russia must become a democratic republic, but Khodorkovski does not want to appear as being too close to Ukraine and Kasparov is against violence,” comments Ponomarev.
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