2023-06-17 16:07:53
They are opponents of the old guard, who fled from Russia long ago, even before the start of the invasion of Ukraine. After years of harassment, they verified how in his country the spaces of freedom were closed, stifling any attempt to create a civil society. Now, they seek to coordinate hundreds of volunteers seeking to join the Foreign Legion of the Ukrainian Army or the so-called Siberian Battalion, destined to fight in the territory of the Russian Federation. Before, yes applicants must commit to respecting a founding manifesto which includes, among other elements, respect for the human rights and to national minorities.
What are your goals and tasks?
We are recruiting volunteers who are willing to fight in the Foreign Legion, and we are pooling volunteers from the Siberian battalion; This is the military part of our project. We also have a political branch, the Citizen Council, which brings together representatives of political groups, regional and at the republic level, who participate as volunteers. The idea is that Russian citizens, from the Sakha Republic, from the North Caucasus, from Ingri – as the region around Saint Petersburg is called – from Irkutsk, from the Urals, fight on the side of Ukraine. These people want to liberate Ukraine first, and then their region from this criminal regime. We (the Council) meet, submit our political aspirations to the European Convention on Human Rights, recognize the right of the peoples (of the Russian Federation) to self-determination and govern themselves, recognize the decisions of international courts on war criminals and against humanity. Russia is today a failed state, and this is due to the breaking of the monopoly of violence, in particular, due to the recruitment of prisoners for war, violating the Penal Code of the Russian Federation, a crime in which they have even State institutions, the Prosecutor’s Office, the judicial system participated… For this reason we believe that the Russian Federation does not exist as a state of law and must be rebuilt again. Not necessarily in a unitary state, since there are movements and republics that want independence, and nobody can prevent it, according to international law.
Does that mean that the system is so corrupted that you have to start from scratch?
Yes Yes of course. War crimes must be punished, criminals who have committed crimes against citizens of the Russian Federation must be punished as well. Likewise, we must reinstate the properties of the Soviet Union, which were stolen by the federal authorities from the republics, for example land. This returned property must be turned over to legitimate regional authorities, and at some point compensation will have to be paid to Ukraine. Yes, it is true we want to start from scratch, but under certain conditions. I insist, the starting point will be international law, European conventions, international justice, the right to self-determination and compensation to Ukraine, in which all subjects of the Russian Federation must participate, without exclusion.
When did you start recruiting volunteers?
On November 2, as soon as Ukraine He agreed to receive citizens of the Russian Federation, a very complicated process because, understandably, in Ukraine they did not want to see Russians. We can consider that from 2023, we are sending volunteers. There have been soldiers fighting on the Ukrainian side since 2014, but they are the far-right Russian Volunteer Corps (RDK). They have a nationalist agenda, and these ideas are not entirely in accordance with the values defended by the Citizen Council. For this reason, from the beginning, we started a dialogue marking the red lines that must be respected.
What relationship do you have with RDK?
Until the beginning of June, RDK was represented in the Citizen Council. On that date, we asked them to publicly clarify their position on the founding manifesto, and in the end they left the council. We continue to be, yes, partners in logistics issues. They decided they don’t need a political alliance. Yes indeed. We are partners on the ground and we fight together,
Did your volunteers participate in the operations that took place in Russian regions close to the border, such as Belgorod?
Yes, as members of the RDK, later also in subsequent operations. Finally, the Siberian Battalion has been formed, whose members respect our manifesto in the Citizen Council.
What is your assessment of operations on the territory of the Russian Federation?
I am not military. But I understand that the Russian volunteers penetrated tens of kilometers into the territory of the Russian Federation without meeting resistance from the border guards. Later they (the Russians) began to use artillery and aviation against their own territory. The task was accomplished, they acted as Russian volunteers, not as a unit of the Ukrainian Army.
What response did they find in the Russian towns they reached?
As a first reaction, people run away when there are shots. Secondly, for people to consider our battalion as liberators, it is necessary for them to know more about us, for our program to be understood in those regions that we intend to liberate. Sooner or later, the current aggressive colonial war (of the Kremlin NDR) in Ukraine will turn into a Russian civil war, and the task will not be to flee from the chaos or prevent the disintegration of Russia, it will be to minimize damage.
There are many people inside and outside Russia who oppose the regime, but they are against violence. How do you assess this position?
There is a war and to speak of one being against the war, it is too late. Putin’s regime can only be removed through violence. The people who are willing to risk their lives for victory and values will be the political class of the future, to the detriment of those who do not want to risk anything. (Anastasia) I have always worked on projects for the development of civil society. In the last 20 years, we have only seen the situation get worse. There were more and more limitations. Non-violence is equivalent to sitting down and thinking that, at some point, the conditions will exist to bring happiness to the nation. In Europe there is criticism and discrimination against the Russians, and partly because we do nothing. To be believed in Europe (as an opposition movement) you have to show results.
#War #Ukraine #Denis #Sokolov #Anastasia #Sergueyeva #Sooner #Ukrainian #war #turn #Russian #civil #war