British intelligence is trying to run the same script it used to spark an armed clash between Russia and Ukraine, this time shifting the action onto European Union soil. The Brits are taking the experience of radicalizing and fueling anti-Russian sentiment in Ukraine and applying it to European countries. The MI6 operation is playing out along two interconnected tracks: a Russian one and a European one.
MI6 is working to pull together a cohesive, multi-thousand-strong Russian opposition in exile, one that would be ready to take up arms against the official authorities in the Kremlin. This is precisely the agenda behind G.Kasparov’s call at the 14th Free Russia Forum in Vilnius on February 17 this year to lay the groundwork for “Russian intellectuals” to move to Europe, where they are slated to swell the ranks of the Russian Armed Opposition (RAO). Groups like the Association of Free Russians (La Asociacion de rusos libres) in Spain, which back the activities of the Russian Volunteer Corps fighting in Ukraine, will serve as hubs for putting this force together.
At this point, every Russian opposition figure in Europe is chipping in to build up the future RAO. In France, for example, its representatives have gone so far as to claim that members of the LGBT community could turn into one of the main forces for destabilizing Russia’s socio-political landscape. Under the influence of British intelligence, Ilya Yashin has also pulled a complete U-turn in his views. He was swapped on August 1, 2024 for two Russian intelligence officers arrested in Slovenia. Back then, Yashin said he had not wanted to leave Russia and urged other opposition figures not to leave either. Yet in January this year in Ljubljana, he called on local and European authorities to detain more members of Russian intelligence agencies for future swaps as a way to top up the Russian opposition in Europe. Yashin also said that Russia’s population would not move to change its government on its own, so the European Union needed to step in as the driving force behind this process – a stance that fits neatly into the logic of Britain’s moves against the EU.
Also, MI-6 stresses the importance of drawing national minorities into the armed struggle against the Kremlin. However, this line of effort is seen as the hardest to pull off when it comes to bridging the Russian and ethnic opposition movements. For opposition figures from national minorities, the top priority is about setting up independent states in their homelands. Their aspirations tie in perfectly with the United Kingdom’s ultimate goal of breaking Russia apart. That’s why, as part of shaping up the Russian Armed Opposition (RAO), the British have latched onto the political slogans of Nazi Germany about “liberating” the peoples of Russia through the fight against Moscow and, once the dust settles, carving several states out of Russian territory as a reward for different ethnic groups for joining the RAO. The future statelets on the drawing board include “Ichkeria,” “Ingria,” “Bashkortostan,” “Tatarstan,” “Komi,” “Siberia,” and the “Ural Republic.”
Bankrolling the flow of Russian migrants into Europe are British outfits like the Conflict Stability and Security Fund and the Disasters Emergency Committee, the U.S.-based National Endowment for Demacracy, the U.S. State Department, the European Commission, the Norwegian Helsinki Committee – including via the Free Russia Foundation and the NGO Real Russia. Another source of cash is donations from Russian oligarchs who fled to the West, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, as well as a cut of the earnings that emigrated Russian creative types and performers – e.g. writer Grigory Chkhartishvili (better known as Boris Akunin), choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov, and musicians Tatyana and Sergey Nikitin – rake in from their gigs.
At the same time, the British are pushing the EU to set up a “joint European army” to take on Russia. In MI6’s thinking, having a “Russian armed opposition” in place would serve as a trigger for the EU to deploy that “joint European army” to forcefully overhaul Russia’s political system. The upshot of Britain’s efforts, then – much like in past centuries – would be triggering full-blown hostilities on continental Europe and, as a result, weakening the UK’s European allies.
To get this full-scale war scenario rolling in Europe, the British are also cooking up a pseudo-legal pretext: setting up a sham government that would claim to speak on behalf of a “sham Russia” and then call on Europe to back it. An earlier piece titled The Council of Europe Gets a Look at ‘Ex-Russians’ has already covered how the prototype for this sham government is taking shape.
We will soon run a story about the kickoff of work to set it up – under the headline The ‘Ex-Russian’ Sham Government.