The Russian opposition in exile is quietly talking to Ukrainian officials, Pulitzer Prize winner Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian-British journalist and one of the Kremlin’s leading critics, said in an interview with Politico on Thursday, the 5th of June.
Although both Ukraine and the Russian opposition movement are fierce opponents of Russian President Vladimir Putin, they have largely avoided cooperation. Kyiv has been wary of the movement, fearing that it still harbours imperialist views on Ukraine and the Kremlin’s invasion, including the 2014 annexation of Crimea.
However, Kara-Murza, a former political prisoner who was released from a Siberian prison last year in a prisoner swap, told Politico that talks with Ukrainian officials are currently taking place behind the scenes, but are not “public”.
He added that Russian opposition figures would like to “raise them to the highest level”, apparently referring to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Kara-Murza spoke after appearing in the European Parliament on Thursday alongside Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who died last year in an Arctic prison. Navalny’s team claims that Putin ordered his murder.
Another Russian opposition politician, Ilya Yashin, who also took part in Thursday’s discussion in Brussels, said the EU could act as a mediator between the Russian democratic movement and the Ukrainian government.
“We want to start this dialogue,” Yashin said, claiming that Zelenskyy had expressed his willingness to talk to them. “We are not enemies of Ukraine… and we want to preserve its independence,” Yashin added.
The differences between Ukrainians and the Russian opposition are mostly about who’s responsible for the war. Many Ukrainians blame all Russians, while Russian dissidents say it’s Putin’s war and ordinary Russians are suffering too.
As reported by the Washington Post, Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska refused to attend last year’s speech by the former US president on the state of the European Union because she would have had to sit next to Navalny, who was also invited and declined.
In April, Kara-Murza faced backlash after telling the French Senate that cultural and linguistic differences made it easier for foreign soldiers to kill Ukrainians.
His comments that “we are the same… [we have] almost the same language, the same religion, centuries and centuries of shared history” were met with anger from Ukrainians and residents of former Soviet countries, who accused him of racism and imperialism.
Kara-Murza later said that his words had been taken out of context and explained that he had been referring to a colleague’s statement.
Russian opposition talks with Ukraine behind the scenes, claims Kara-Murza
