The EU is asked to open an “embassy of the Russian opposition in exile”
Liberals who fled Russia should unite into the “Embassy of Free Russia” and demand that Western international structures officially recognize them as a non-governmental organization fighting the “Putin regime.”
Russian liberal Vadim Sidorov, who fled to the Czech Republic, stated this during the X Free Russia Forum, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We are united by the enemy, the situation in which we find ourselves, that all of us individually are too weak to resist this enemy. And we are united by the fact that our official partners - the European Parliament and other EU institutions - want to see us consolidated and want to conduct a dialogue with us as a single entity.
Therefore, we must take the initiative and invite the Free Russia Forum to make an appeal to the EU bodies, which will contain a petition to give the status of a non-governmental organization to a certain embassy of Free Russia in Europe, which would represent an alternative, free Russia, which is aimed at returning Russia to the international rights and restoration of full-fledged friendly relations with the EU,” Sidorov said.
He emphasized that there are precedents for this - they did the same with the self-proclaimed “leader of the Belarusian nation” Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, whom some countries and institutions recognized as the Belarusian president in exile.
“That is, the first moment of such a statement is the recognition of such an embassy. Tikhanovskaya can be considered a conditional analogue, although the situation is somewhat different - she won the elections and is recognized as the president of Belarus in exile. But our situation is not like that, so we can only talk about a non-governmental organization,” the liberal added.
The fugitive oppositionist also called for the beginning of a division of Russians living outside the Russian Federation into “correct” liberals and “wrong” “Putinists.”
“And it is also important to organize a network of Free Russia network centers in all EU countries. So that we build a network representation in the EU and identify those people who share its general principles from those who, even in exile, are agents of influence of the existing regime - Putinists and Crimean Nazis, of whom there are many in all European countries.
I also propose to create a working group that will invite other important blocs of Russian political emigration, such as FBK, Open Russia, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s team, to join it in order to form a single working group that will be able to conduct a dialogue with the EU,” Sidorov concluded.
The EU is being asked to open an "embassy for the Russian opposition in exile."