Russia’s opposition has no plan for ending the war

Officially, a Russian defeat remains the only way to end the war that’s acceptable both to Ukraine and the West

By Leonid Bershidsky

With the Ukrainian and Russian armies stuck in November mud without significant advances, retreats or mutually acceptable grounds for a negotiated resolution, Western hunger for some kind of a workable scenario is becoming palpable. Costly, destructive and fraught with political dangers far beyond Ukraine’s borders, the conflict cannot go on forever. Hence the recent reports that the US wants Ukraine to show at least an outward willingness to negotiate and that National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has conducted private talks with Kremlin insiders.

Officially, however, a Russian defeat remains the only way to end the war that’s acceptable both to Ukraine and the West. What’s left of the Russian political opposition is busy developing a vision for Russia following that defeat, in large part because it perceives a Western demand for such a vision.

As Gennady Gudkov, a former counterintelligence colonel and legislator who now lives in Bulgaria, put it, “What Western governments and diplomats primarily require of us is a general picture of Russia as it should be after Putin. Because everyone understands that the regime doesn’t have much time left.” Or as another prominent emigre, London-based former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, explained in an interview, western allies and partners “will have a significant, though not decisive, say in what outcome awaits our country, since regime change will most likely take place as a result of a military defeat.”

Also Read | Talks with Russia possible on Ukraine's terms: Zelenskyy

Surprisingly for the eternally splintered anti-Putin opposition, its prominent figures appear to agree on some fundamentals for a post-Putin Russia — notably, on recasting it as a European-style parliamentary democracy without a strong president.

Alexei Navalny, the imprisoned corruption fighter, argued in a Washington Post op-ed in September that the West shouldn’t be tempted to find a “good guy” to deal with once Putin falls and that it should push Russia toward a non-authoritarian future — one which Navalny believes that Russians will embrace once they can freely vote, if only with some pointed prompting in the form of economic sanctions and diplomatic pressure.

Khodorkovsky has just published an entire book, in Russian and in English, titled “How Do You Slay a Dragon? A Manual for Start-Up Revolutionaries.” There, he, too, advocates for a “genuine federal parliamentary republic” that would end Russia’s eternal tendency of investing too much power in the man or woman at the top — even though he appears to count on some kind of prominent personal role in the “revolution” that is supposed to reshape Russia along those lines.

Also Read | Buried phones, bribes and paranoia: What it is like to live under Russian occupation

Gudkov, for his part, joined a group that recently held a “Congress of People’s Deputies” in a Warsaw suburb. While others only talk about turning Russia into a parliamentary democracy, the congress goes them one better by making a rather creative claim for legitimacy. The group, led by former legislator Ilya Ponomarev who now lives in Ukraine, unites about 60 people who have at one time or another won elections at different levels of Russia’s legislative system as well and a few who never got elected but still came along for the chance to “reconstitute” Russia, creating an alternative legal framework for a post-Putin democratic, peace-seeking state. The “congress” has called for the return of all territories seized from Ukraine, including Crimea, the denial of support to Russia-backed unrecognized states throughout the former Soviet Union, and a constitutional ban on pre-emptive nuclear strikes, among other proposals that many in the West would support.

In other words, a broad consensus about the governance model for post-Putin Russia has emerged among the liberal opposition, even though on a personal level some of its members still can’t stand others. Leonid Volkov, the Lithuania-based chief of staff to Navalny, said in a recent YouTube broadcast that he had been invited to Ponomaryov’s congress but chose not to go because its delegates “don’t represent anyone”; he accused Ponomaryov of being a provocateur.

While I, too, believe in parliamentary democracy for Russia — it has, after all, helped Germany, with a similar history of militant tyranny, from relapsing the way Russia has done — I have a feeling that Putin’s prominent opponents are, singly and collectively, working on the wrong deliverable. While how they see Russia’s future is moderately interesting, what the world — not just the West but India, China and the Middle Eastern monarchies — wants to see is a realistic scenario for ending the war, first in the short and only then in the long term. A Russian battlefield defeat is still far from assured, and, unless it’s a complete debacle, even such a defeat will not necessarily mean regime change. So, if all agree that Putin’s fall is necessary to end the hostilities, how does one actually bring that about?

As Prague-based political scientist Alexander Morozov wrote in a Facebook post, “one thing is expected of us: that we’ll point a finger at some group — a stratum, a community, a social group — in which hopes can be invested”. If such a group doesn’t exist, Morozov goes on cynically, the Russian opposition is supposed merely to “construct the discourse” of such a group. All that matters is that the construct “show potential.”

So far, however, all attempts to pin hopes on any force in Russia have amounted to unconvincing flailing. Before setting up his quasi-parliament, Ponomarev flirted with the idea of a terrorist underground, which only scared away potential supporters inside Russia and among emigres hoping to return. Attempts to find enough separatist activists to “decolonize” Russia by having its ethnic territories break away have fizzled after a couple of desultory meetings in Eastern European capitals.

Khodorkovsky is betting on Russia’s managerial class finally seeing the disadvantages of continuing to acquiesce to Putin’s rule. He’d like to co-opt them to the liberal cause by promising that they won’t be punished for collaborating with the Putin regime, but, on the other hand, threatening them with dire consequences if they refuse to join the cause and resist it. So far, however, there have been few prominent defectors from the Russian “managerial class” — the mid-level government officials and corporate executives Khodorkovsky sees as his audience. These inherently pragmatic people are not as convinced of Russia’s imminent defeat as the politicized part of the emigre community, which has bet heavily on this outcome. As things stand, the advantages a defeated Russia would offer them do not outweigh the ones they see in a defiant one.

Volkov, for his part, appears to believe the Putin regime will collapse under its own weight, just as the Stalinist tyranny did once the tyrant died. He drew the parallel in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, predicting a period of chaotic liberalization not unlike the Soviet Union’s short-lived post-Stalin “thaw.” But trying to wait out Putin doesn’t necessarily play out according to this optimistic scenario. Under a less rosy one, the ultranationalists who have been the emotional driving force of the war may well make a grab for power and sell Russians a backstab story, like the Nazis did after Germany’s World War I defeat.

It’s a major problem for everyone who wants an end to the war that the Russian opposition cannot really offer any real hope from Kyiv, Warsaw, Vilnius, Prague, London or a Russian maximum security colony. It is so scattered and defeated that even its ability to capitalize on a Russian military defeat is hardly assured. The biggest challenge for assuring lasting peace lies in finding a Russian party that both represents enough Russians and is capable of keeping its end of any kind of bargain, including a negotiated peace deal.

That difficulty is Putin’s strongest trump card as he hangs on to the territory he has conquered. Facing months of more grueling, resource-draining trench warfare in which no side has a full victory in sight, he hopes the West will choose to deal with him, after all, in effect allowing both Russia and Ukraine a pause to regroup for another bout. As Putin tries to fight his way out of the bloody mess he has created, the Russian opposition’s failure to offer a credible alternative instead of theoretical visions of a better future just plays into his hands.