KHODORKOVSKY CENTER

Oct 31, 2025

Putin’s biggest fear has been exposed.
As a Russian dissident who spent 10 years in his prisons, I can tell you it’s not sanctions or missiles. It’s the rising legitimacy of the Russian opposition. And that legitimacy just got a major boost.
In an unprecedented decision, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) recently voted to establish a “Russian Democratic Forces Platform”. For the first time since the Ukraine invasion, Russia will be represented at PACE — not by Putin, but by a relatively united democratic opposition.
This is a diplomatic breakthrough for those of us in the opposition and it has Putin terrified. His entire regime rests on his personal power — without him, it has zero legitimacy in the eyes of Russians and the world. The opposition’s growing international stature directly threatens that.
Imagine if Putin dies or is incapacitated. His successor, be it his personally picked prime minister or someone else, would have no mandate because there have been no free and fair elections in Russia for many years. In that chaos, an internationally-recognised Russian opposition could be the key to shaping the country’s future. Putin knows and fears.
I spent ten years in remote Russian prisons: from Mongolia’s border to Finland’s edge. A cellmate stabbed me in the face. I went on dry hunger strikes 4 times and genuinely was ready to die. But throughout it all, Putin was disciplined in maintaining a lie: my persecution was never political.
The regime called me a thief and a criminal. They invented economic charges while the entire world knew they were fabricated. This is how “spin dictators” (Sergei Guriev’s term) like Putin operate: they conceal the authoritarian nature of their power behind a veneer of legality.
In Putin’s case—until now.
Two weeks ago, the FSB announced that the Russian Anti-War Committee, the opposition group I founded in 2022, was supposedly plotting a coup. They cited our Berlin Declaration calling for the liquidation of Putin’s regime. For the first time, they admitted the obvious: opposition to Putin is now officially a crime. https://www.ft.com/content/a34bab00-0098-4ebb-8b7b-91239032927d
The statement included the usual fabrications about armed overthrow and financing Ukrainian paramilitaries. We are not doing any of this. But buried in their accusations was dissatisfaction with our dialogue at PACE.
The scale of the FSB operation suggests the decision came from Putin himself. A large investigative group was assigned to fabricate charges against 23 people. But why this hysteria over a symbolic forum in Strasbourg?
To be blunt, Putin is 73 years old. When he dies or becomes incapacitated, his regime will have no legitimacy. A prime minister elected by no one. Judges appointed by Putin. A parliament filled through rigged elections. The entire regime is centred around one man—and it has zero legitimacy without him.
In that moment of transition, a Russian opposition delegation recognised by Western democratic institutions becomes the most legitimate force in the country. It could shape Russia’s future. This terrifies Putin and his entourage more than sanctions, more than weapons.
If the West wants to weaken his position and bring peace to Ukraine, the path is clear: strengthen the international standing of Russia’s anti-war opposition. Every democratic institution must follow PACE’s example and begin institutionalised dialogue with us. The regime is already preparing for its end.
Longer version available here: https://inews.co.uk/news/world/russian-dissident-living-london-putin-knows-end-coming-soon-4006885

Spoke with The i paper about the Putin regime’s Achilles heel — and how to exploit it.

📰🔗Read the full Op-Ed:

…………………

In Putin’s army, soldiers are being tortured, executed, and buried by their own commanders. It’s a practice so widespread that it’s got a name – ‘obnuleniye’, or ‘zeroing out’.
‘Zeroing out’ means killing one’s own soldiers, sometimes by gunfire, sometimes through torture, and sometimes by sending them into suicidal wave assaults without weapons. The practice began with summary executions as a punishment for disobedience. By now, it’s taken root and become systematic. Soldiers are being murdered as a means of discipline, extortion, and control.
Commanders demand their men pay bribes to avoid suicidal assaults on fortified Ukrainian positions. Those who cannot pay are sent to die. Those who raise objections are thrown into pits, beaten to death, drowned, or shot on the spot.
Soldiers have described seeing their comrades beaten to death for drinking, tied to trees as bait for drones, buried alive, or drowned in flooded trenches. Others are thrown into pits and forced to fight each other to the death. One commander ordered his men to ‘kill or be killed’ – whoever survived would be released.
FPV drones are also used as a sick form of ‘euthanasia’. Commanders are said to have ordered drone operators to drop grenades on their own wounded to ‘finish them off’ so they cannot be captured and interrogated.
For the most part, there is no tactical or strategic value to these killings. They are motivated by cruelty and often profit. Commanders extort their troops for money, vehicles, food – whatever they can get out of them.
Officers accused of these murders have bought themselves luxury cars, homes, and even furnished bunkers, all while their troops rot in unmarked graves, officially listed as ‘missing in action’.
Among the ‘missing’ is 19-year-old German Fridman, who before his disappearance wrote to his family from the front to warn them that his own commanders were threatening to kill him.
He wrote to his brother: ‘They’ve threatened to shoot me at the first opportunity, or throw a grenade into my dugout. Send this to mom if anything happens to me’, along with details of the officers involved. He later sent to a friend a coded message that read simply: ‘My life is under threat’. Soon afterwards, he disappeared. His family was told he was missing in action, which of course meant they received none of the compensation granted to those killed in battle. His mother has searched everywhere for information, writing to the army, prosecutors, MPs, and even Putin himself. No answer. She is beside herself and has had to seek psychiatric treatment, which is completely understandable.
Families back in Russia who ask too many questions are often threatened. Some are told drones will be ‘sent to their homes’. Of course, there is no avenue to seek justice, as military prosecutors have been ordered to keep out of it.
According to an insider at the main military prosecutor’s office, ‘there’s an unofficial ban on investigating officers at the front. They can do whatever they want’. More than 12,000 complaints about such killings have been submitted to prosecutors. All of them have been buried by the system.
This is the natural evolution of Putin’s war of aggression, and a microcosm of his rule as a whole. Like the regime itself, these officers have no qualms about murdering even their own, just as long as it helps them preserve their positions and enrich themselves.
Original reporting by :

https://verstka.media/im-pohuj-kogo-obnulyat-kak-kaznyat-v-rossijskoj-armii
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/30/russian-army-chiefs-torturing-and-executing-soldiers-who-refuse-to-fight-in-ukraine-report-says

……………

Reminder of original statement from Khodorkovsky Center in 2022 :

Statement of the Anti-War Committee of Russia

Members of the Anti-War Committee of Russia:

Mikhail Khodorkovsky, businessman, philanthropist Garry Kasparov, politician, 13th world chess champion Sergei Aleksashenko, economist Sergei Guriev, economist Yuri Pivovarov, historian, academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Yevgeny Kiselev, journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, politician, historian Dmitry Gudkov, politician Boris Zimin, businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin, businessman Viktor Shenderovich, writer