On October 26, 2015, at Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, a panel discussion occurred centering around the future of the Russian economy and more specifically the large energy sector.

Featured at the event were Olga Oliker, head of the Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS, Vladimir Milov of the Institute for Energy Policy, Ilya Ponomarev, the exiled State Duma MP and the only Duma MP to vote against the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Ilya Zaslavskiy of Chatham House, and Sergey Aleksashenko of the Brookings Institution. Both Olga Oliker and Jeff Mankoff of CSIS thanked Free Russia Foundation for the idea of the event and invitation of leading Russian experts as panelists.

Vladimir Milov stressed the redundancies of the statements issued by Russian state officials regarding the state of the economy. The Russian economy, already under some strain from low oil prices, mismanagement, and international sanctions, could be headed for even harder times. Milov claimed there was no clear view for improvement of the economy when the sharp decline in domestic demand and consumer purchasing power wasn’t showing signs of improvement. Even in the 1990s, widely regarded both within and beyond the Russian borders as a time of runaway corruption, economic destruction, and weakness, domestic demand and consumer purchasing power was able to rebound.

Real wages and pensions in Russia are sharply declining due to the weak rouble. Low oil prices, by contrast, while certainly part of the equation, may not be as large a part of the economic decline as previously thought. The recession in 2008 also featured a large drop in oil prices, but back then the rouble was stable and there were no international sanctions to speak of.

Russia is also in an international credit rut. Today, in contrast to the economic problems in 2008, banks are much more cautious to lend money to Russia and Russians, even those who are not included on sanctions lists.

“We do not know who Russia will invade tomorrow”. Milov said referring to this reluctant mood.

Are these problems here to stay? It is often argued that a removal or phasing out of sanctions could give the economy a much-needed jump start, but the problems plaguing the Russian economy may be more deeply rooted than previously speculated. Further shocks to the rouble’s stability, already weak, could happen in the future and Russia’s service, industrial, and manufacturing sectors, while still operating very close to their pre-sanctions capability, could be forced to downsize in the future. State authorities, Milov claimed, had implicitly instructed these sectors to stay the course until things calm down.

Whether that stability will come is another question. Domestic car sales, for instance, have plummeted by 40 percent.

In Russia’s large energy sector, things also look grim. Oil fields in Western Siberia are depleted. Growth at the tip of the iceberg, in terms of smaller oil companies, is still present but not very substantial. Large companies with state investment such as Rosneft and Lukoil are starting to shrink.

Milov compared the situation to a matryoshka doll, in that the energy sector’s outlook seems to become progressively worse the further in it is examined.

How does Russia reverse this? The answer is simple-more drilling and investment, but the Kremlin’s look towards heavier taxes and overall under-financing of the industry could hurt that hope substantially. A similar policy, with similarly negative results, was undertaken by the Kremlin in the late 1980s under Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Budget spending could also be a liability down the road. The Kremlin wants to keep the budget where it is according to Milov, but they’re going to need more money to do that, and they may have to get it from taxes levied on the energy sector. If that happens, there’s a large possibility of the oil industry, still in the black at the moment, to fall into the red.

The federal budgets in 2012 and 2013 were allegedly geared to benefit wealthy Russians rather than teachers and healthcare workers

When asked about his analysis, Mr. Milov stressed the overall atmosphere of uncertainty. In addition to higher taxes becoming a concrete policy enacted by Moscow, the idea of printing more money is also allegedly being mulled by the Kremlin. Over the last ten years, the Kremlin has stressed state investment as the primary way to grow the Russian economy. Unfortunately, since 2008, that growth has been minimal or nonexistent. It’s not corruption to blame, but what Milov claimed was “sunken capital”. Russia’s far eastern regions, for instance in the city of Vladivostok, have seen extensive projects with little use or benefit.

Next to speak was former A Just Russia State Duma MP Ilya Ponomarev. Mr. Ponomarev was exiled and branded as a traitor to his country when he became the lone MP to vote against the March 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Ponomarev, a far-left politician, began his remarks by claiming that the economic crisis in Russia didn’t start with the War in Eastern Ukraine, but the presidential election in 2012. Russia’s social safety net infrastructure, in addition to the public sector’s health, was not very good. The federal budgets in 2012 and 2013 were allegedly geared to benefit wealthy Russians rather than teachers and healthcare workers, Ponomarev explained. As a result, the regions became over-saturated with expenses they couldn’t pay for.

Ponomarev once represented the well-off city of Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city and the largest in Russia’s vast Asian region. Novosibirsk was well-off in terms of small business, but in the last few years has suffered from a much-smaller-than-needed budget, “Going from profitable to inept in one year” as he said. Capital expenditures ground to a screeching halt, hurting the regional economies and consumer confidence.

The perception of Siberians and Russians from the eastern areas also changed, he said, from good, loyal producers to “beggars, jumping high to receive subsidies”. To make matters worse, regional debt skyrocketed as well as interest, and state banks were unable to refinance or provide money to remedy the sick economy. Prices also increased.

Rather than blaming the incompetence or mismanagement undertaken by the government, Russia’s extensive media controls drove the blame towards the United States and Ukraine, or as Mr. Ponomarev phrased it, “Bloody America and the fascist Kyiv junta”.

This might be slowly but surely changing. Support for the War in Eastern Ukraine, once as high as 70 percent, has dropped to around 50%. On this subject, Mr. Ponomarev claimed that it would continue to drop but that protests were unlikely. Unlike the introductory speaker, he said that economic problems didn’t create social unrest in Russia on their own, even if they sometimes laid a foundation for it. Pension reform in the 2000s created nearly spontaneous large protests, some bigger than the infamous Bolotnaya protests, and the government had to step in and pump money back into the system to calm things down. In 1998, when Russia defaulted and the rouble was near worthless, protests were scattered at most.

What’s the political impact? Regional elections aren’t looking super hopeful for the ruling United Russia party. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is gaining momentum in Siberia, even winning in Irkutsk, another comparably well-off region. Change, if it is to come, will happen in the developed regions rather than the depressed ones. United Russia will likely keep its majority but lose some seats in the 2016 Duma elections as opportunity pops up on the left side of Russian politics, but whether democratic forces will come into some power is still very much questionable.

The Kremlin seems stuck on ideas and proposals that the other members of the Eurasian Economic Union  are not interested in

Ilya Zaslavskiy of Chatham House suggested Russia may take advice from Iran and Belarus to relieve its economic rut, namely, to reach small but pivotal agreements with the United States and European Union while keeping the broad overall policies and rhetoric intact. Russia’s energy sector, however, has no clear policy to remedy its problems despite a lot of talk of closer ties with China and the chilling effect will remain a thorn in Russia’s side. The “obsessions” of “building pipelines around Ukraine and the new friendship with China” sound like the same old mistakes as the proposed North Stream may be delayed or cancelled if the EU does not choose to cooperate, and not many binding agreements have been made with the Chinese despite extensive effort and talks. Chinese banks have not been loaning Russia as much money as originally hoped.

To distract from that, Mr. Zaslavskiy floated the idea of another area of tension between Russia and the West: Central Asia. The Kremlin seems stuck on ideas and proposals that the other members of the Eurasian Economic Union (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Belarus) are not interested in. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are both facing looming succession crises to their longtime strongman leaders Nursultan Nazarbayev and Islom Karimov, who are 75 and 77 respectively. In addition, Kyrgyzstan seems to be drifting towards a pro-Kremlin autocracy after flirting with democracy, and Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are under threats from the jihadist group Islamic State and its affiliates. Closer to home, the Kremlin is mulling the construction of a military base in Belarus and may decide to “protect its interests” in Moldova, where protests reminiscent of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution are taking place.

Like Mr. Ponomarev, Sergey Aleksashenko of the Brookings Institution was insistent that Russia’s economic problems have been festering since before the Ukrainian Conflict. He stressed the drop in investment and scathingly criticized the current administration, claiming Putin “destroyed the federation” by 2004 and “Humiliated property rights and the electoral process”.

At the same time, Aleksashenko firmly stated that despite the fact that the Russian economy was not going to collapse any time soon, prospects of growth looked grim. Many Russians point to the large growth the Russian economy saw during Putin’s first two terms in office, but the truth is that those seven years of growth have been followed by eight years of stagnation and decline. Furthermore, the Russian government’s use of reserve funds to prop up the rouble and the budget could have disastrous consequences. Even the usual refrains of bolstering the social safety net, long a campaign promise of many of the large Russian political parties, may be discarded in next year’s Duma elections.

By Kyle Menyhert

 

Featured at the event were Olga Oliker, head of the Russia and Eurasia Program at CSIS, Vladimir Milov of the Institute for Energy Policy, Ilya Ponomarev, the exiled State Duma MP and the only Duma MP to vote against the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, Ilya Zaslavskiy of Chatham House, and Sergey Aleksashenko of the Brookings Institution. Both Olga Oliker and Jeff Mankoff of CSIS thanked Free Russia Foundation for the idea of the event and invitation of leading Russian experts as panelists.

Vladimir Milov stressed the redundancies of the statements issued by Russian state officials regarding the state of the economy. The Russian economy, already under some strain from low oil prices, mismanagement, and international sanctions, could be headed for even harder times. Milov claimed there was no clear view for improvement of the economy when the sharp decline in domestic demand and consumer purchasing power wasn’t showing signs of improvement. Even in the 1990s, widely regarded both within and beyond the Russian borders as a time of runaway corruption, economic destruction, and weakness, domestic demand and consumer purchasing power was able to rebound.

Real wages and pensions in Russia are sharply declining due to the weak rouble. Low oil prices, by contrast, while certainly part of the equation, may not be as large a part of the economic decline as previously thought. The recession in 2008 also featured a large drop in oil prices, but back then the rouble was stable and there were no international sanctions to speak of.

Russia is also in an international credit rut. Today, in contrast to the economic problems in 2008, banks are much more cautious to lend money to Russia and Russians, even those who are not included on sanctions lists.

“We do not know who Russia will invade tomorrow”. Milov said referring to this reluctant mood.

Are these problems here to stay? It is often argued that a removal or phasing out of sanctions could give the economy a much-needed jump start, but the problems plaguing the Russian economy may be more deeply rooted than previously speculated. Further shocks to the rouble’s stability, already weak, could happen in the future and Russia’s service, industrial, and manufacturing sectors, while still operating very close to their pre-sanctions capability, could be forced to downsize in the future. State authorities, Milov claimed, had implicitly instructed these sectors to stay the course until things calm down.

Whether that stability will come is another question. Domestic car sales, for instance, have plummeted by 40 percent.

In Russia’s large energy sector, things also look grim. Oil fields in Western Siberia are depleted. Growth at the tip of the iceberg, in terms of smaller oil companies, is still present but not very substantial. Large companies with state investment such as Rosneft and Lukoil are starting to shrink.

Milov compared the situation to a matryoshka doll, in that the energy sector’s outlook seems to become progressively worse the further in it is examined.

How does Russia reverse this? The answer is simple-more drilling and investment, but the Kremlin’s look towards heavier taxes and overall under-financing of the industry could hurt that hope substantially. A similar policy, with similarly negative results, was undertaken by the Kremlin in the late 1980s under Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Budget spending could also be a liability down the road. The Kremlin wants to keep the budget where it is according to Milov, but they’re going to need more money to do that, and they may have to get it from taxes levied on the energy sector. If that happens, there’s a large possibility of the oil industry, still in the black at the moment, to fall into the red.

The federal budgets in 2012 and 2013 were allegedly geared to benefit wealthy Russians rather than teachers and healthcare workers

When asked about his analysis, Mr. Milov stressed the overall atmosphere of uncertainty. In addition to higher taxes becoming a concrete policy enacted by Moscow, the idea of printing more money is also allegedly being mulled by the Kremlin. Over the last ten years, the Kremlin has stressed state investment as the primary way to grow the Russian economy. Unfortunately, since 2008, that growth has been minimal or nonexistent. It’s not corruption to blame, but what Milov claimed was “sunken capital”. Russia’s far eastern regions, for instance in the city of Vladivostok, have seen extensive projects with little use or benefit.

Next to speak was former A Just Russia State Duma MP Ilya Ponomarev. Mr. Ponomarev was exiled and branded as a traitor to his country when he became the lone MP to vote against the March 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Ponomarev, a far-left politician, began his remarks by claiming that the economic crisis in Russia didn’t start with the War in Eastern Ukraine, but the presidential election in 2012. Russia’s social safety net infrastructure, in addition to the public sector’s health, was not very good. The federal budgets in 2012 and 2013 were allegedly geared to benefit wealthy Russians rather than teachers and healthcare workers, Ponomarev explained. As a result, the regions became over-saturated with expenses they couldn’t pay for.

Ponomarev once represented the well-off city of Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city and the largest in Russia’s vast Asian region. Novosibirsk was well-off in terms of small business, but in the last few years has suffered from a much-smaller-than-needed budget, “Going from profitable to inept in one year” as he said. Capital expenditures ground to a screeching halt, hurting the regional economies and consumer confidence.

The perception of Siberians and Russians from the eastern areas also changed, he said, from good, loyal producers to “beggars, jumping high to receive subsidies”. To make matters worse, regional debt skyrocketed as well as interest, and state banks were unable to refinance or provide money to remedy the sick economy. Prices also increased.

Rather than blaming the incompetence or mismanagement undertaken by the government, Russia’s extensive media controls drove the blame towards the United States and Ukraine, or as Mr. Ponomarev phrased it, “Bloody America and the fascist Kyiv junta”.

This might be slowly but surely changing. Support for the War in Eastern Ukraine, once as high as 70 percent, has dropped to around 50%. On this subject, Mr. Ponomarev claimed that it would continue to drop but that protests were unlikely. Unlike the introductory speaker, he said that economic problems didn’t create social unrest in Russia on their own, even if they sometimes laid a foundation for it. Pension reform in the 2000s created nearly spontaneous large protests, some bigger than the infamous Bolotnaya protests, and the government had to step in and pump money back into the system to calm things down. In 1998, when Russia defaulted and the rouble was near worthless, protests were scattered at most.

What’s the political impact? Regional elections aren’t looking super hopeful for the ruling United Russia party. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation is gaining momentum in Siberia, even winning in Irkutsk, another comparably well-off region. Change, if it is to come, will happen in the developed regions rather than the depressed ones. United Russia will likely keep its majority but lose some seats in the 2016 Duma elections as opportunity pops up on the left side of Russian politics, but whether democratic forces will come into some power is still very much questionable.

The Kremlin seems stuck on ideas and proposals that the other members of the Eurasian Economic Union  are not interested in

Ilya Zaslavskiy of Chatham House suggested Russia may take advice from Iran and Belarus to relieve its economic rut, namely, to reach small but pivotal agreements with the United States and European Union while keeping the broad overall policies and rhetoric intact. Russia’s energy sector, however, has no clear policy to remedy its problems despite a lot of talk of closer ties with China and the chilling effect will remain a thorn in Russia’s side. The “obsessions” of “building pipelines around Ukraine and the new friendship with China” sound like the same old mistakes as the proposed North Stream may be delayed or cancelled if the EU does not choose to cooperate, and not many binding agreements have been made with the Chinese despite extensive effort and talks. Chinese banks have not been loaning Russia as much money as originally hoped.

To distract from that, Mr. Zaslavskiy floated the idea of another area of tension between Russia and the West: Central Asia. The Kremlin seems stuck on ideas and proposals that the other members of the Eurasian Economic Union (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Armenia, and Belarus) are not interested in. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are both facing looming succession crises to their longtime strongman leaders Nursultan Nazarbayev and Islom Karimov, who are 75 and 77 respectively. In addition, Kyrgyzstan seems to be drifting towards a pro-Kremlin autocracy after flirting with democracy, and Tajikistan and Turkmenistan are under threats from the jihadist group Islamic State and its affiliates. Closer to home, the Kremlin is mulling the construction of a military base in Belarus and may decide to “protect its interests” in Moldova, where protests reminiscent of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution are taking place.

Like Mr. Ponomarev, Sergey Aleksashenko of the Brookings Institution was insistent that Russia’s economic problems have been festering since before the Ukrainian Conflict. He stressed the drop in investment and scathingly criticized the current administration, claiming Putin “destroyed the federation” by 2004 and “Humiliated property rights and the electoral process”.

At the same time, Aleksashenko firmly stated that despite the fact that the Russian economy was not going to collapse any time soon, prospects of growth looked grim. Many Russians point to the large growth the Russian economy saw during Putin’s first two terms in office, but the truth is that those seven years of growth have been followed by eight years of stagnation and decline. Furthermore, the Russian government’s use of reserve funds to prop up the rouble and the budget could have disastrous consequences. Even the usual refrains of bolstering the social safety net, long a campaign promise of many of the large Russian political parties, may be discarded in next year’s Duma elections.

By Kyle Menyhert

 

Please join us for an in-person discussion on The Plight of the Kremlin’s Political Prisoners on Monday, October 30 from 12:00 noon to 1:30 pm at the Victims of Communism Museum located at 900 15^th St NW in Washington, DC. The event will give a voice for those who can no longer speak for themselves and will include an interactive exhibit featuring photos and quotes of prominent political prisoners held by the Kremlin.

Space is limited, RSVP is required. The conversation is public and on-the record, members of the press are welcome.

The event will mark the International Day of Political Prisoners and feature substantive updates by:

• Sergei Davidis, Head of Political Prisoners Program, Memorial Human Rights Center;
• Evgenia Kara-Murza, Advocacy Director at Free Russia Foundation;
• Mariana Katzarova, the UN Special Rapporteur on Russia;
• MEP Andrius Kubilius, the Standing Rapporteur on Russia at the EU Parliament;
• Karinna Moskalenko, Russia’s leading human rights lawyer, Founder of the Center de la Protection Internationale; and
• Vadim Prokhorov, lawyer for political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza.

Expert presentations will be followed by an extensive Q&A session with the audience. The discussion will be moderated by Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation. To reserve your spot, please register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/743473939567?aff=oddtdtcreator

Speakers’ Bios:

Andrius Kubilius is a Lithuanian politician and a Member of the European Parliament (MEP). He served as Prime Minister of Lithuania from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. He was the leader of the conservative political party Homeland Union – Lithuanian Christian Democrats. Kubilius became a member of the pro-independence Sąjūdis movement, which favored separation from the Soviet Union. He later became the Executive Secretary of the Sąjūdis Council. Soon after the re-establishment of Lithuania’s independence, Kubilius was elected to the Seimas (parliament). Since then, Kubilius has been an active figure in Lithuanian politics. Kubillius is the current Standing Rapporteur on Russia at the EU Parliament.

Mariana Katzarova (Bulgaria) was appointed as Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Russian Federation by the UN Human Rights Council on April 4, 2023. Ms. Katzarova led the UN Human Rights Council’s mandated examination of the human rights situation in Belarus in 2021-22. During the first 2 years of the armed conflict in Ukraine (2014-16), she led the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission team in Donbas as head of the regional office in Eastern Ukraine. For a decade she headed the Amnesty International investigations of human rights in Russia and the two conflicts in Chechnya. Ms. Katzarova founded RAW in WAR (Reach All Women in War) in 2006 after working as a journalist and human rights investigator in the war zones of Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. At RAW, she established the annual Anna Politkovskaya Award for women human rights defenders working in war and conflict zones. She was Advisor to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on combating human trafficking, and a senior advisor at the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).

Evgenia Kara-Murza is a Russian human rights activist and wife of political prisoner Vladimir Kara-Murza, the twice-poisoned Russian opposition leader, imprisoned since April 11, 2022 for speaking out about the war on Ukraine. She worked as a translator and interpreter in Russian, English, and French for pro-democracy NGOs including the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, the Institute of Modern Russia, and Pen America. She subsequently joined her husband Vladimir at Free Russia Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan international organization supporting civil society and democratic development in Russia. Advocating for human rights accountability and promoting civil society and democratic change in Russia, she serves as FRF Advocacy Director.

Sergei Davidis is Head of Political Prisoners Support Program and Member of the Council at the Memorial Human Rights Center in Moscow, Russia. He was educated in Sociology at Moscow State University and on Law at Moscow State Law Academy. For many years, he was a participant and one of the organizers of the democratic opposition movement. His research interests are closely related to activities to support political prisoners in Russia, and he studies the sociological and legal aspects of politically motivated deprivation of liberty, in particular, in the context of world practice and international norms.

Karinna Moskalenko is Russia’s leading human rights lawyer. She was the first Russian lawyer to take a case to the European Court for Human Rights and won the first ever case against the Russian government at the court in Strasbourg. She founded the Center for International Protection in Russia in 1994. She is a member of the Moscow Helsinki Group. While some of her clients are household names: Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Garry Kasparov, Igor Sutyagin, Alexander Litvinenko to name a few, she has also represented countless victims of human rights abuses. She won more than 100 cases including AH & others v. Russian Federation where she was representing the rights of American families who were in the process of adopting children when Russia banned US adoptions with their so-called Dima Yakovlev law. Karinna moved her family to Strasbourg in 2006 where she founded the “Center de la Protection Internationale,” a human rights litigation NGO focused on litigating cases in international courts, which has filed and won more than 500 cases on behalf of its clients. For nine year, Karinna was a Commissioner for the International Commission for Jurists for which she is an Honorary member. Currently she is a head of the experts’ group, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council for the UN High Commissioner working on the UN mandated examination of human rights situation in Belarus. Vadim Prokhorov is a Russian human-rights lawyer who has defended critics of the Kremlin, including prominent opposition politicians and anti-corruption campaigners. He has defended many human rights activists, such as Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Vladimir Bukovsky. Prokhorov’s work as a lawyer has made him an important figure in the human rights field, as the Russian government has increasingly suppressed public dissent and oppositional work. This increase in governmental repression gravely impacted Prokhorov’s work, who has been representing human rights defender and opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza for the last ten years. Currently, Vadim Prokhorov continues his advocacy to protect the Russian opposition, political prisoners in Russian courts – online from abroad.

Free Russia Foundation, along with our staff, expresses our deep concern and indignation at the final verdict delivered today, July 28, 2023, by the Stavropol Court in the Russian city of Pyatigorsk, regarding the participants of the “Ingush Case.”

The verdict remains unchanged since December 2021 when Akhmed Barakhoev, Musa Malsagov, and Malsag Uzhakhov were each sentenced to 9 years in a general regime colony. Ismail Nalgiev, Bagaudin Khautiev, and Barakh Chemurziev received 8-year sentences each, while Zarifa Sautieva was sentenced to 7.5 years. They were all found guilty of using violence against representatives of the authorities, establishing an extremist group, and participating in its activities. 

The appeal trial lasted for over half a year, with the defense lawyers presenting their arguments for 12 days during the debates. In contrast, the prosecutor’s speech was remarkably brief, lasting only five minutes, where he simply read out the arguments from the objections, which were concise and fit on just a few sheets of paper.

This stands as one of the most significant political cases in Russian history. It all started on March 27, 2019, when a rally against the alteration of Ingushetia’s administrative border with the Chechen Republic in Magas led to a crackdown on the Ingush opposition. Consequently, administrative cases were initiated against hundreds of participants in the people’s protest, and dozens of them faced criminal charges.

The Memorial Center, an organization that monitors politically motivated cases, has officially designated all those convicted in the “Ingush Case” as political prisoners. According to Sergei Davidis, who serves as the co-chairman of the Memorial Center, this case stands out as one of the most unprecedented political cases in Russian history. He states, “Civil society leaders are being accused merely for being civil society leaders. There is no fabrication involved; instead, they are trying to twist perfectly legitimate actions into criminal acts.”

Free Russia Foundation shares the same perspective as Memorial and urges the international community to take notice of this blatant violation of human rights.

The verdict handed down to the participants in the “Ingush Case” is a true mockery of justice, primarily because the prosecution was unable to demonstrate that the oppositionists had actually formed an extremist group. Additionally, there was a failure to provide evidence of any criminal conspiracy to incite violence against law enforcement personnel. Throughout the indictment, words such as “probably,” “presumably,” and “maybe” were frequently employed, undermining the strength of the case. Notably, the word “approximately” was used more than ten thousand times

A few years back, Ingushetia demonstrated to the entire nation that it was possible to conduct multi-day protests with thousands of people in a peaceful manner, without jeopardizing law and order. However, the Kremlin viewed this as a display of free thinking that clashed with the current regime’s control, leading them to take punitive action against the organizers of the peaceful protest. This move was intended to send a warning to residents of other regions in Russia, showcasing the potential consequences they might face for seeking justice.

The criminal case brought against the organizers is undeniably politically motivated, with the aim of maintaining power and suppressing public activism from critics of Putin’s regime. The verdict delivered today represents yet another step in the direction of quashing constitutionally guaranteed rights and freedoms of not only the people of Ingushetia but also citizens across Russia as a whole. It highlights the authorities’ attempt to curb any form of public activism and dissent.

Free Russia Foundation calls for the immediate release of all individuals unjustly convicted in the “Ingush Case.” Furthermore, we demand that the officials responsible for their unwarranted persecution be held accountable and brought to justice.

We urge the international community, human rights organizations, and all those who stand for freedom and justice to demonstrate their solidarity with the participants in the “Ingush Case.” It is crucial to support their fight for justice and the protection of human rights. Freedom and justice are fundamental and non-negotiable values, and any violation of these principles demands a resolute response and unified support.

We cannot afford to remain indifferent to the ongoing situation, and by coming together in solidarity, we can work towards fostering a truly democratic society.

Free Russia Foundation is closely following the news surrounding the activities of the Wagner Group inside Russia with grave concern.

The events themselves, the diverging agendas advanced by various Russian power groups, and how they may unfold in the coming days are highly dynamic and uncertain. What is clear is that the political situation in Russia is extremely unstable and volatile, with the potential to escalate quickly and posing risks far beyond Russian borders.

This development, however, is a logical evolution of the lawlessness, violence, and corruption purposefully harnessed by Putin in order to remain in power and brutally wielded against Russian civil society in the form of repressions, and against the people of Ukraine in the form of military aggression.

Free Russia Foundation calls on the democratic world to provide Ukraine with all it requires for a decisive victory on the battlefield against Russian forces and to strengthen its commitment to pro-democracy Russians, both in-country and those forced into exile—as the two prerequisites for peace and stability in the region.

On June 5-6, 2023, the European Parliament in Brussels at the initiative of Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius and others, hosts a two-day conference “The Day After”, with the participation of over 200 representatives from Russia’s anti-war and opposition groups, journalists, prominent cultural figures, as well as European politicians.

On June 5, 2023, Natalia Arno, President of Free Russia Foundation spoke at the European Parliament in Brussels. In her opening remarks to the inaugural session of the Brussels Dialogue— Roundtable of EU and Democratic Russia Representatives, Ms. Arno described the heroic efforts by Russian civil society to stop the war and stand up to Putin’s regime; and called for a closer cooperation between Russian and European democratic forces to support Ukraine’s victory and ensure a lasting peace in Europe.

Below is the transcript of her full remarks.

Ladies and gentlemen, distinguished members of the European Parliament and EU institutions, esteemed representatives from across the transatlantic community, and my dear friends and colleagues who are selflessly fighting for a free and democratic Russia, 

Thank you all for being here today. My special thanks to the MEP from Lithuania, Standing Rapporteur on Russia, Andrius KUBILIUS and to Shadow Rapporteurs – Messrs. CIMOSZEWICZ, GUETTA and LAGODINSKY – and their amazing teams who worked tirelessly to gather us all for this historic event. We are thankful for a very timely realization at the EU level that we, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, are an important actor in efforts to stop the war and the key force in transforming Russia into democracy. 

The Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February shook the world with its brutality and aggression, wretchedly echoing World War II. This war has been the first war watched on social media, brought to our living rooms– with every brutal death, every destroyed hospital, every orphaned child—staring into our face, breaking our heart, hundreds of times per day. But it’s not something that only exists on a computer screen. The reality on the ground is both unspeakable destruction and human cruelty that defies who we crave to be as humans. This war is black and white. The fight between the evil and the good, between the dictatorship and the democratic world with Ukraine on the front lines. There are no half tones, no moral ambivalence. Just like Hitler, Putin is perpetrating a criminal atrocity not only against Ukraine, but against freedom, democracy and our civilized way of life. 

This war is a huge tragedy for Ukraine, but it is also a catastrophic disaster for Russia. It’s a tragedy for so many Russians who understand what this war is, and it’s a tragedy that there are so many Russians who don’t understand it at all. 

This war has forced the world to take a new look at Russia. What is this country and who are these people engaged in unspeakable acts of brutality? Who are these people who passively watch as their army kills and destroys without any reason? They must be pure evil reincarnated! 

As the world, in pain and anger, looked for ways to respond, some of your governments shut your borders to all Russian passport holders, cancelled air traffic from Russia, pulled out businesses, denied services to all Russians, equated all Russians to Putin. We understood the reason for this. 

But let me remind you something. The Russian civil society and independent media were the first victim of Putin’s regime. We were the first ones to warn about the dangerous, corrupt, criminal, murderous nature of Putin’s regime. We were those telling you that his internal repressions will lead to external aggression. We were those who exposed the Kremlin’s export of corruption, influence campaigns in Europe and elsewhere. We were those who discovered Prigozhin’s factory of trolls and other disinformation tricks. We were the ones pleading the West not to enable Putin, not to operate with “realpolitik” and “business as usual”. In Putin’s war against freedom and democracy, Russian civil society has always been one of his priority targets. Many of us have paid a terrible price ourselves – losing our homeland, in many cases losing our freedom to imprisonment and to some of us, losing lives or family members. 

While we often hear there are no good Russians, I know many. All of us who are here today were invited by the European Parliament for our merits. We and our colleagues have moved mountains. Hundreds of us here represent civil society organizations, media outlets, grassroots initiatives with dozens of thousands activists and journalists in our networks. We communicate to millions through our YouTube and Telegram channels, newspapers, programs, and events. All of us are in exile now.

Inside Russia, many keep resisting, too. According to OVD-info, a portal tracking activism inside Russia, since the full-scale invasion there have been only 25 days without arrests for anti-war protests. There is the story of a Siberian grandmother— anti-war activist Natalia Filonova from my native Republic of Buryatia, whose special needs son was taken away from her in retribution for her protests and sent to a remote orphanage, while she herself is in jail awaiting trial. Another political prisoner Ilya Yashin, has just published a story about Natalia Filonova. Yashin himself is in jail for 8.5 years for telling the truth about Bucha.

Another real Russian patriot is a dear friend and man whom most of you know personally— Vladimir Kara-Murza, who has survived two assassination attempts by Putin’s regime, two comas, and still went back to Russia to testify to what is right and what is true. He is now in prison on a Stalin-era 25year sentence. 

Yesterday it was the birthday of Alexey Navalny who also survived Novichok poisoning and is slowly being killed in prison. 

All these names and many others will be mentioned at this conference and shouldn’t be forgotten. There are tens of thousands of documented stories like these. Tens of thousands of “good” humans arrested and prosecuted for their anti-war and pro-democracy stance. 

Why am I telling you all of this? In hopes that you see that Russian civil society was the first front in Putin’s war on democracy and peace.  As Western leaders dined and shook hands with Putin for 20 years, as Europeans accommodated Putin’s regime in exchange for cheap energy, as they offered citizenships to his associates, Putin was busy eradicating the Russian political opposition, independent media and civil society. 

Today, we address a pressing issue that lies at the heart of our shared destiny and demands our immediate attention and decisive action. Through all this shock from the devastating tragedy that we are all experiencing, I want to bring to you a message of resilience, hope and an urgent plea for solidarity. We, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, are not only first victims of Putin’s regime, and not only targets for friendly fire and problems for your governments because we need visas and bank accounts, but most importantly, we are agents of change. Not foreign agents or undesirables as the Kremlin labels us, but agents of change, agents of the Russian people and Russia’s future. We are the part of the solution. We are the ones who are willing to transform Russia, to make it normal and civilized.

No doubt that Ukraine will win, but after the war it won’t be easy. We understand doubts about Russia’s democratization prospects, but we, pro-democracy anti-war anti-regime Russians, can’t afford to believe that freedom and democracy is not possible in our home country. Democracy in Russia is the only guarantee of sustainability of Ukraine’s victory and a key factor of stability and security in Europe and globally.

Those of us invited to this event have been working tirelessly as supporters of change for years. Our collective resume includes rallies against media capture and Khodorkovsky’s arrest in Putin’s early days, election observation missions proving massive fraud in all levels of elections throughout the country, “Dissenters Marches”, rallies on Bolotnaya and Sakharova and many other squares throughout the country and throughout the years, against the annexation of Crimea and invasion to Eastern Ukraine then and the full-scale invasion now. Our collective resume includes advocating for sanctions, both personal and sectoral, advocating for enforcement of sanctions and for making it harder for the Kremlin to circumvent them. Our collective resume includes assistance to Ukraine – evacuations from the war zone, search for Ukrainian POWs, litigation and advocacy on behalf of Ukrainian hostages of Putin’s regime held in Russian jails, cooperation on international justice mechanisms including the Tribunal and on documenting war crimes, humanitarian assistance to Ukrainians including shelters, clothing, medication. Our collective resume includes huge efforts by Russian independent media, bloggers, influencers, grassroots initiatives to tell the truth about this brutal war, to disseminate the factful information, to counter Kremlin’s narratives, to influence public opinion inside Russia. Our collective resume also includes discussions on how to achieve political transition, how to conduct sustainable reforms, how to make deputinization and even desovietization of Russia. 

We are not Europe’s headache, we are your asset. We ask our European partners to use our expertise, because nobody knows Russia better than us. Nobody knows Putin regime and his methods better than us. Nobody knows the Russian people better than us. Individually we do a lot. Collectively as a Russian pro-democracy anti-war movement we can do even more. With your solidarity, with the support of the democratic world, we can win. Working together is a force multiplier.

When I looked on your website yesterday, the main stated aims of the European Union within its borders are: to promote peace, its values and the well-being of its citizens. 

How do we promote peace now? We do everything we possibly can to make sure Ukraine wins this war. But it is clear, that until there is a real political change in Russia, until democracy and civil rights are reestablished for the Russian people, until Putin’s regime is brought to justice, no lasting peace is possible. It’s very practical for the Western democracies to support, strengthen and grow us— inside and outside of Russia. 

I am here to call on the EU as a community— to give voice to pro-democracy anti-war Russians at European institutions. Regular sessions of this conference, new report on Russia by the EU Parliament, EU Special Representative for Russia and other working mechanisms are important to discuss plans on reconstructing Ukraine after the war, prosecuting war criminals, and reforming Russia after Putin. So that Russians inside Russia see that Putin is wrong— the West does not seek to destroy Russia, and that Russians who are for democracy are not outcasts but are embraced by the international democratic community. 

We need a coherent Europe-wide strategy on how to stabilize the Russian civil society— save us from peril, prevent us from quitting the fight, help us mobilize and engage Russian society. This means clear legalization policies; some standard approach to our ability to work and travel. That means the end of the punitive measures such as denial of services that are not only counterproductive but also are illegal under the EU law. That means judging us on the basis of our values and our actions, not on the basis of our citizenship and nationality. That means support of our programs and initiatives.

In this room there are Russians from different regions and organizations, of different backgrounds, with different opinions and you might see some debates and disagreement throughout the program, but we have one unified position: Ukraine must win the war, and Russia must change from the inside to be a reliable and stable partner for the democratic world. Russia must return to its fundamental values of producing great poets, composers, physicists, and philosophers instead of being hackers, invaders, and war criminals. We in this room are here to join hands with our European partners and work with you to make this happen.

While traveling abroad recently, Free Russia Foundation’s president fell ill under circumstances that cause great concern. The matter is under investigation.

The health and safety of our staff and beneficiaries are our paramount concern.

Free Russia Foundation continues its work for a free, democratic, peaceful and prosperous Russia, reintegrated into the international community as a constructive and positive actor.