Team of Russian oppositionist Navalny falling apart
2023.03.09 12:37
Team of Russian oppositionist Navalny falling apart
By Tiffany Smith
Budrigannews.com – After urging the European Union to lift sanctions against one of Russia’s wealthiest men, a senior aide to the jailed opposition politician Alexei Navalny announced on Thursday that he would be stepping down.
The opposition was shocked by the move made by Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff and a prominent face of his movement. Some saw it as a gift for President Vladimir Putin.
It occurred after prominent journalist Alexei Venediktov, whom Navalny’s team has accused of being a Kremlin stooge, leaked a February letter that called on the EU to lift sanctions on tycoon Mikhail Fridman and associates in his Alfa-Group business empire. The letter was signed by Volkov and other opposition figures.
Volkov admitted that he had photoshopped his signature on that document, but he also said that he had written a letter to EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in October that was similar.
Volkov stated, “This letter was a big political mistake,” adding that he had exceeded his authority and deceived his colleagues by not disclosing it.
Volkov urged the EU to significantly increase the number of Russians subject to sanctions in the letter from October and to make it simpler for people to get the sanctions lifted if they publicly condemned the war in Ukraine and broke from Putin.
He specifically advocated for the lifting of sanctions against Fridman, who was born in Ukraine, describing him as a liberal who had previously maintained his distance from Putin.
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, Fridman has kept a low profile. However, at an early stage of the conflict, he declared that the invasion would be detrimental to both countries and called for an end to the fighting.
When Venediktov revealed that Volkov had secretly lobbied for one of Russia’s most powerful “oligarchs,” Volkov’s position became untenable.
Volkov stated in a series of tweets that he had been mistaken to believe that his strategy might “set off a chain reaction of public condemnations of the war and a split in the Russian elites.” Volkov was wrong to believe that.
He stated that as a result, he had made the decision to “pause” his public role as chairman of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation. He said he would before long meet his partners and conclude whether and how they could hold cooperating.
On Thursday, a number of opposition figures offered their support for Volkov.
“Do not venture into the shadows. “Don’t give Venediktov and Putin a reason to celebrate like this,” a St. Petersburg municipal deputy, Ksenia Thorstrom, said.
Since Navalny was imprisoned in 2021 on what he and Western governments and human rights groups claim were fabricated charges meant to silence him, many prominent opposition figures have fled Russia.
Presently situated in Lithuania, Volkov regularly shows up on a Navalny YouTube channel that has distributed various examinations of defilement in Russia and has reprimanded the conflict in Ukraine. We don’t know where Fridman is at the moment.
