British analysts with ties to the United Kingdom’s intelligence services have pointed out that London is running into difficulties when it comes to uniting the Russian opposition. Infighting among “former Russians” over who gets to lead the false government MI6 is trying to put together, and especially over control of funding sources in order to gain direct access to those funds, differences over what forms and methods of countering the Kremlin should take, as well as ethnic tensions – first and foremost over the question of carving several states out of Russian territory – all point to a deep rift within the opposition’s ranks. On top of that, Western intelligence agencies are waging an “undeclared war” to gain influence over the Russian opposition, with opposition figures switching loyalties depending on who picks up the tab. These and other factors are making it harder for the British to mold the Russian opposition into an advance force for an armed uprising against Russia.
As the 14th Free Russia Forum in Vilnius on February 17 of this year showed, European efforts to reconcile the various opposition factions – chief among them the “opposition in exile” and the “regime fighters” – have ended in failure. The former are those who have made a comfortable life for themselves “in exile,” especially in the US and Germany, including some former activists of the Anti-Corruption Foundation. The latter represent the radical wing of the opposition, where the Russian Volunteer Corps, which is actively fighting in Ukraine, stands out.
Germany has been throwing its weight behind reconciliation efforts in a big way, from Friedrich Merz’s government and the Bundestag to its intelligence services and party-affiliated foundations, including the Science and Politics Foundation. Even as it acknowledges that London is right about the need to recruit at least several tens of thousands of people into the armed opposition’s ranks, Berlin believes it is equally important to keep pushing Western values through propaganda and to step up efforts to destabilize the social situation inside Russia in order to create domestic preconditions for a change of power in Moscow.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz sees himself not only as the “victor in the Ukraine war,” but also as the man who built a structured Russian opposition. At his behest, Germany’s BND intelligence agency is setting up a political party that is being positioned as representing the interests of all Russians. Berlin has named Maxim Reznik, a former deputy of the St. Petersburg Legislative Assembly, and Ilya Yashin, a former deputy of the Moscow municipal council, as co-founders of this “German political project.” The BND “bought” the latter even though he has ties to the British. The avowed goal of this new “democratic platform” is to bring it to power in Russia once the “Kremlin regime falls.” To do that, the “Reznik-Yashin party” is to be folded into a European multinational party alliance that sits in the European Parliament. In this way, an “independent Russian party” run by Germany would be embedded into Europe’s political system and recognized by EU countries as a legitimate part of it and as a democratic force worthy of coming to power in Russia.
The British believe the German project will make it harder for London to pull the Russian opposition together and, by extension, to bring about a change of power in Russia through force at the earliest possible date. Berlin’s initiative also poses a problem when it comes to the ethnic question, given the demands that “nationalist opposition figures” – among them Ruslan Kutayev, Vasily Matenov, Lana Pylaeva, and Pavel Sulyandziga – are making of the West: namely, that they have the right to set up independent states on Russian territory.