Exiled Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky and several other prominent Russian opposition figures have been accused by the country's Federal Security Service (FSB) of creating a "terrorist organization" and of plotting to violently seize power.
The FSB said on October 14 that it was investigating more than 20 others as part of the case, including dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza, former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and leading economists Sergei Aleksashenko and Sergei Guriev.
All are part of the "Anti-War Committee of Russia," which has been deemed "undesirable" in the country. The organization was founded on February 27, 2022, after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
The group's manifesto states that its goals are to stop the war and oppose Vladimir Putin's regime, which the organization views as dictatorial. Many members of the movement left Russia after the war began.
The Russian authorities' move also comes after a recent decision by the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) to establish a "Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces that gives opponents of President Vladimir Putin a stronger voice at Europe’s main human rights body.
"The Kremlin perceives the PACE affair as a major problem," Khodorkovsky, who lives in exile in London, said in a social media post.
"Hence the new cases of 'power grabs,' the lies about 'recruiting' and 'arming the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Sorry, but no. Humanitarian aid, yes," he added.
PACE voted last week to create the platform with Russian democratic forces to support democratic change in Russia and address war crimes in Ukraine.
The decision sparked tensions among Russian opposition figures abroad, with debates over the inclusion of the late anti-corruption crusader Aleksei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK).
Russia was ejected from the Council of Europe and PACE in March 2022, weeks after it launched its all-out attack on Ukraine.
The decision to give opponents of Putin’s government a platform for dialogue with the rights body was “historic,” Kara-Murza told Current Time, the Russian-language TV and digital network run by RFE/RL.
“The voice of…the Russian democratic opposition will be heard within the walls of the Council of Europe,” he said, calling it “the most important platform for the development of a road map in the wall for the reintegration of a future, post-Putin Russia into the European legal space and European institutions.”
But the PACE decision set off angry exchanges between figures and factions in the fractured Russia opposition on social media, aggravating tensions that have long been a hurdle to unified action.
The main source of tension over the decision was a memorandum that was published alongside the resolution on the PACE website, listing some of the main Russian opposition forces abroad and what appeared to be criteria for potential inclusion in the group that will represent the Russian opposition at the assembly.
Such criteria sparked a series of exchanges of online criticism, in some cases pitting Navalny's FBK, now led by his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, against other opposition figures including Khodorkovsky.
Kara-Murza dismissed the idea that Navalnaya and FBK members would not be welcome as “ridiculous” and said he hopes that the selection of members of the opposition platform can begin in mid-December, after a mechanism is created, and that the delegation will be in place in time for a PACE plenary session that begins in late January.
Formerly Russia's richest man, Khodorkovsky was arrested in 2003 on fraud charges that he says were trumped up by Putin and his allies to punish his political activity, bring influential tycoons to heel, and put the oil assets of his company, Yukos, into state hands. He spent just over a decade in prison before being pardoned and flown out of the country in December 2013.
He has since lived in London and funded various projects aimed at promoting democracy in Russia.
In April 2023, he was among a group of some 50 leading Russian opposition figures who signed a joint declaration denouncing the invasion of Ukraine and proclaiming Putin's government "illegitimate and criminal."
