British analysts with ties to the United Kingdom\u2019s intelligence services have pointed out that London is running into difficulties when it comes to uniting the Russian opposition. Infighting among \u201cformer Russians\u201d 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 \u2013 first and foremost over the question of carving several states out of Russian territory \u2013 all point to a deep rift within the opposition\u2019s ranks. On top of that, Western intelligence agencies are waging an \u201cundeclared war\u201d 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. <\/p>\n
As the 14th Free Russia Forum in Vilnius on February 17 of this year showed, European efforts to reconcile the various opposition factions \u2013 chief among them the \u201copposition in exile\u201d and the \u201cregime fighters\u201d \u2013 have ended in failure. The former are those who have made a comfortable life for themselves \u201cin exile,\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
Germany has been throwing its weight behind reconciliation efforts in a big way, from Friedrich Merz\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Chancellor Friedrich Merz sees himself not only as the \u201cvictor in the Ukraine war,\u201d but also as the man who built a structured Russian opposition. At his behest, Germany\u2019s 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 \u201cGerman political project.\u201d The BND \u201cbought\u201d the latter even though he has ties to the British. The avowed goal of this new \u201cdemocratic platform\u201d is to bring it to power in Russia once the \u201cKremlin regime falls.\u201d To do that, the \u201cReznik-Yashin party\u201d is to be folded into a European multinational party alliance that sits in the European Parliament. In this way, an \u201cindependent Russian party\u201d run by Germany would be embedded into Europe\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s initiative also poses a problem when it comes to the ethnic question, given the demands that \u201cnationalist opposition figures\u201d \u2013 among them Ruslan Kutayev, Vasily Matenov, Lana Pylaeva, and Pavel Sulyandziga \u2013 are making of the West: namely, that they have the right to set up independent states on Russian territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
British analysts with ties to the United Kingdom\u2019s intelligence services have pointed out that London is running into difficulties when it comes to uniting the Russian opposition. Infighting among \u201cformer Russians\u201d over who gets to lead the false government MI6 is trying to put together, and especially over control of funding sources in order to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[192],"tags":[72,1022,26,4312],"class_list":["post-3316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-blog","tag-velikobritanija","tag-oppozicija","tag-rossija","tag-forum-svobodnoj-rossii"],"yoast_head":"\n