Bitter Infighting Divides Anti-Putin Opposition

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Bitter Infighting Divides Anti-Putin Opposition

Accusations of betrayal have already tarnished the movement once led by Aleksei Navalny. Now, the election of Donald J. Trump, a Putin admirer, further complicates the opposition efforts.

Infighting and accusations between Russian opposition groups seem to be threatening the legacy of government opposition that Aleksei A. Navalny had long nurtured.Credit...Vassil Donev/EPA, via Shutterstock

By Valerie Hopkins

Reporting from Berlin

Nov. 16, 2024, 5:35 a.m. ET

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It was the largest East-West prisoner swap since the Cold War, with a Russian assassin and seven others returned to Moscow in August in exchange for 16 prisoners who had run afoul of President Vladimir V. Putin.

Among those released by Russia were four political prisoners and three people with ties to the country’s most prominent opposition figure, Aleksei A. Navalny, who died in prison in February. The deal seemed poised to breathe new life into a fractured movement that had struggled to exert influence in the aftermath of Mr. Navalny’s death.

But three months later, there are signs that the Russian opposition movement has never been more divided — or faced as steep a challenge in working to counteract Mr. Putin.

Infighting and accusations among competing anti-Putin groups threaten not only its political and financial viability, but also the legacy that Mr. Navalny worked hard to leave behind.

On Sunday, legions of those opposed to the Kremlin’s rule are expected to march in Berlin in the first big anti-Putin protests since the activists were released in August — a rally intended as a strong show of unity.

The election this month of Donald J. Trump to a second term as the U.S. president has further complicated the effort. Mr. Trump in the past has expressed admiration for Mr. Putin and suggested that he would end American support to Ukraine in its war against Russia. If Mr. Trump takes a benevolent stance toward Russia, it could further insulate Mr. Putin from criticism.

Mr. Navalny’s daughter, Dasha, recently worked for the presidential campaign of Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump’s opponent. The opposition figure’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, met with both Ms. Harris and President Biden this year.

Still, Leonid Volkov, one of the most influential figures in the Navalny camp, this month sought to assuage fears that a Trump administration would be worse for the Russian opposition than the Democrats. “We have never taken any goodies, freebies or favors from the Democrats — and we don’t expect any from the Republican administration either,” he said on a live show on the Navalny team’s YouTube channel.

Beyond the uncertainties of a new administration in Washington, however, the larger issue is a bitter fracturing of an opposition movement that has never spoken with one voice.

In September, Mr. Navalny’s organization made a shocking accusation: that another Putin critic in exile had organized a brutal assault with a hammer on Mr. Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s former chief of staff, in Lithuania in March.

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Leonid Volkov, a longtime Navalny aide, was assaulted outside his home in Vilnius, Lithuania, in March, less than a month after Mr. Navalny’s death.Credit...Mindaugas Kulbis/Associated Press; Anna Biryukova

Many opposition-minded Russians were already frustrated with Mr. Navalny’s allies over the past few years, viewing them as imperious and insular. But the accusation opened floodgates of criticism among Russian activists living in the West, with some prominent figures accusing Mr. Navalny’s aides of trying to silence any voices that might compete with them for leadership of the opposition.

Two weeks after the September accusation, the opposition was further roiled when an anti-Putin campaigner, Maxim Katz, accused the Navalny team of receiving funds from people accused of fraud, and even elevating one to register the group’s legal entity in the United States.

In the aftermath of these accusations, the crises engulfing the pro-democracy opposition have tarnished the reputation of a group that many hoped would be a beacon of leadership for a revived anti-Putin opposition.

“You have squandered Navalny’s legacy,” Boris Zimin, a Russian businessman in exile who had been one of the Navalny group’s biggest donors, wrote in a Facebook post directed at Mr. Navalny’s exiled aides.

Aleksei A. Venediktov, the former editor of Ekho Moskvy, a popular radio station that was shut down by the government after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, lamented the fissures in the opposition.

A representative for the Navalny opposition group declined to comment.

“This is a competition to show the West who the real leadership of the Russian opposition is,” said Mr. Venediktov, a former subject of investigations by the Navalny group’s anti-corruption unit, known as the FBK.

“They are fighting for control of the cage they are in, without understanding that there is a whole territory around it to focus on,” he said.

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“This is a competition to show the West who the real leadership of the Russian opposition is,” said Aleksei A. Venediktov, the former editor of Ekho Moskvy.Credit...Nanna Heitmann for The New York Times

The Navalny group made its accusations in a video report by its investigations unit, which it posted on YouTube. It said that the hammer attack on Mr. Volkov — initially assumed to have been ordered by the Kremlin — had actually been orchestrated by Leonid Nevzlin, a former businessman in Russia and now a prominent democracy campaigner in exile.

The report said the Navalny team had become convinced of that scenario after seeing chats and hearing recorded conversations that it said implicated Mr. Nevzlin.

Mr. Nevzlin, 65, denied all of the accusations. “I have nothing to do with any attacks on people, in any form,” he wrote on X the day the report was published. “I am convinced that justice will confirm‎ the absurdity and complete groundlessness of the accusations against me.”

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Leonid Nevzlin, a democracy campaigner, in Vilnius, Lithuania, in 2022. Mr. Nevzlin has denied the accusations against him.Credit...Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images

For weeks, the hourlong video produced by the Navalny team was the primary topic on YouTube channels popular with opposition-minded Russians.

In its video, the Navalny group sought to link Mr. Nevzlin with Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the former Russian oil tycoon who spent a decade in prison. He is now a major financier of opposition activities from exile and considered by some to be a rival of the Navalny group.

There was no implication that Mr. Khodorkovsky had been involved in the alleged plot. But the Navalny team’s efforts to implicate him, some observers say, further indicated that the Russian opposition is competing within itself for influence and the right to represent anti-Putin Russians, rather than building a big tent movement.

The accusations by Mr. Katz further divided the anti-Putin forces.

Mr. Katz, who worked with the Navalny team more than a decade ago but who has recently been critical of it, published a two-hour video and accompanying text. It accused the group of accepting money from bankers that he said had defrauded customers of hundreds of millions of dollars, and knowingly providing the bankers with political cover in the West.

The Navalny team and its bankers deny all wrongdoing.

On Wednesday, Ms. Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s widow, told the Russian TV channel Dozhd that the foundation was “going through very, very tough times right now.”

She acknowledged that it was a mistake to engage with “dubious people,” but she also thanked the banker who registered the organization in the United States, saying he “helped in a difficult situation” and that she believed he had done this “completely selflessly.”

Many commentators say they are still looking for much-needed answers from the Navalny camp.

“FBK behaves as an example of political purity and honesty and sets standards for anti-corruption investigations and responses to them, but it turns out that it itself does not meet these standards,” Mikhail Fishman, a journalist with the exiled TV Rain, said in a weekly commentary show released on Nov. 3. “This answer raises doubts about the credibility of all other FBK investigations,” he added.

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Yulia Navalnaya, the widow Mr. Navalny, in May. She recently discussed the foundation and the accusations in an interview.Credit...Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA, via Shutterstock

Even some of Mr. Navalny’s most ardent supporters and his organization expressed disappointment over the recent developments. Mr. Zimin, the large Navalny donor who runs a family philanthropic foundation focused on education and science, said, “All the enormous credit of trust, political capital — everything went down the drain.”

In May, Mr. Zimin said in an interview that he would stop giving money to Mr. Navalny’s organization because he had found himself “increasingly at odds with what the FBK was doing.”

Mr. Katz, who has a large following online and sustains himself in exile largely on small donations from his viewers, said he envisioned a future in which Russian opposition forces could unite. But he said his repeated requests to meet with the Navalny team had been refused.

Mr. Venediktov, the former radio station editor, said that while he felt Mr. Navalny was a talented politician who knew how to bridge disagreements and build coalitions, the people now carrying on his legacy are less able to find common ground with people who share their aim of overthrowing Mr. Putin.

“Every single decision they make seems to damage the anti-Putin position,” he said.

Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed reporting from Istanbul, and Milana Mazaeva from New York.

Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow. More about Valerie Hopkins