Who is Ilya Ponomarev, the anti-war Russian renegade exiled in Ukraine? | Russia-Ukraine warfare News | USAEMALL.com

Ilya Ponomarev was as soon as a member of the Russian parliament, an unruly liberal tolerated by the management. These days, he’s on a mission to slay Vladimir Putin and his aides.

“They should be terminated with an aspen stake through their hearts,” he wrote in his memoir, Does Putin Have to Die?: The Story of How Russia Becomes a Democracy after Losing to Ukraine.

Exiled in Ukraine since 2016, Ponomarev is the political head of the Freedom of Russia Legion, a volunteer militia thought to incorporate about 1,600 Russian dissidents and defectors utilizing pinprick ways to irritate Russian troops with the goal of in the future marching on Moscow.

To some, he cuts a maverick, temptingly believable determine. The 48-year-old compares himself to Charles de Gaulle, the French navy chief who led his nation’s resistance to the Nazis from exile throughout World War II and later grew to become president.

Who is the person who has reportedly been giving Putin, the president who will run once more subsequent yr, nightmares?

Who is Ponomarev?

A self-confessed “libertarian communist”, Ponomarev hails from an elite background, his mom having as soon as sat in parliament, his grandfather a former Russian ambassador to Poland.

Born in Moscow, the physics graduate began out as a tech entrepreneur, transferring his expertise to the oil and gasoline trade. In his 20s, he labored with Yukos Oil, then chaired by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch now exiled in London.

As he recounts in his e book, he later labored with a TV firm, virtually placing a enterprise take care of CNN that was scuppered by Putin. Such was his frustration that he determined to enter politics.

In 2007, on the age of 32, he entered the Duma, elected on the ticket of Just Russia, a social-democratic social gathering throughout the Kremlin-approved “systemic opposition”.

Even so, Ponomarev caught his neck out, invoking the “crooks and thieves” epithet for the ruling social gathering that had earlier been popularised by Alexey Navalny, the opposition chief now behind bars.

In 2012, he and fellow social gathering member Dmitry Gudkov performed a outstanding position within the “white ribbon” road protests in opposition to Putin, decrying the alleged rigging of the 2011 parliamentary and 2012 presidential elections. The following yr, he refused to help a legislation banning “gay propaganda”.

However, Ponomarev definitively crossed the Rubicon when he voted in opposition to the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

He was captured on digital camera, refusing to face and applaud when Putin referred to “national traitors” – a time period utilized by Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf – in a key speech.

That picture was printed on big pro-government road banners that additionally featured Navalny; Boris Nemtsov, who would later be assassinated; and different dissidents with the phrases “Aliens among us” emblazoned beneath.

By 2016, he went into exile in Ukraine.

Since Russia’s invasion started in early 2022, he has positioned himself as the general public face of pro-Ukraine Russians, talking not just for the Freedom of Russia Legion (FRL) in Ukraine but additionally the National Republican Army (NRA), a secretive community of partisans allegedly working inside Russia.

Ponomarev additionally arrange a wartime Russian-language opposition TV channel, calling it February Morning, in reference to when the warfare started. He used it as a platform to announce the NRA’s declare of duty for final yr’s assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of considered one of Putin’s shut political allies, on the outskirts of Moscow. US intelligence had blamed the automobile bombing on Ukrainian forces.

Still, inside Russia, he stays comparatively unknown.

“Average Russians don’t know much about what Ponomarev is doing right now because there is heavy propaganda, and it’s not within Putin’s interests to popularise or advertise him,” stated Natia Seskuria, an affiliate fellow on the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based suppose tank.

What is the Freedom of Russia Legion?

The FRL is considered one of two Russian teams working inside Ukraine to convey down Putin’s authorities. The different one being the Russian Volunteer Corps (RVC). While each share the identical goal, they’re ideologically completely different. The RVC is commanded by a recognized Nazi near the native Azov regiment, an ultra-nationalist volunteer navy unit.

Last May, the FRL and the RVC shocked the world with their joint cross-border raids on western Russia’s Belgorod area. It was the primary time that partisans had entered Russia throughout the Ukraine warfare. Footage of the assaults confirmed a Russian officer mendacity face down in a pool of blood subsequent to Russian passports at a border checkpoint within the city of Grayvoron.

Ponomarev stated Ukraine’s navy intelligence is supporting his coup efforts.

This yr, he claimed a job in a drone assault on the Kremlin, saying his group had helped to smuggle the units over the border. He additionally has steered he was concerned within the assassinations of warfare blogger Vladlen Tatarsky and pro-Kremlin novelist Zakhar Prilepin.

But many deal with his claims with scepticism.

“He’s got no kind of background in military or covert operations. He’s entirely dependent on the Ukrainians. Probably Ukraine’s quite happy for him to kind of try and claim credit,” stated Roland Oliphant, senior overseas correspondent with The Telegraph who reported from Moscow for a decade.

The FRL is steered by the Congress of People’s Deputies, a shadow parliament of types that Ponomarev helped to arrange. Based in Poland with members inside and out of doors Russia, it’s hoping for Putin’s authorities to break down and is engaged on a transition plan and new structure.

Congress leaders embrace Mark Feygin, a former lawmaker and lawyer who represented the Pussy Riot feminist, anti-Putin punk band. But the physique lacks large names, like Navalny and chess grandmaster-turned-political activist Garry Kasparov, who are usually not eager on the FRL’s violent ways.

Should Putin be fearful?

Ponomarev hopes to construct a power that may march on Moscow. Could he succeed the place Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin failed?

The late Russian mercenary chief, who led the onslaught on Ukraine however fell out with Russian military leaders, staged a spectacular mutiny in opposition to the Kremlin in June, taking management of Russia’s navy headquarters in Rostov-on-Don. He rapidly referred to as off the revolt, relocating to Belarus earlier than dying in a mysterious airplane crash two months later.

“The power of Prigozhin was that he had all these nationalist Russian credentials. He’d led a force in Ukraine. He was clearly pro-war. He was clearly not a national traitor. I think that’s quite important to Russians,” Oliphant stated.

Stationed on enemy territory, Ponomarev has a little bit of a PR downside.

As Oliphant identified, he lacks elite help to mount a coup, notably throughout the safety companies.

“Are any of those guys in the FSB [Federal Security Service] and FSO [Federal Protective Service] and a whole string of other agencies going to do a coup on behalf of this self-proclaimed liberal who fled to Ukraine?”

According to Seskuria, the Kremlin has rapidly buried reminiscences of Prigozhin’s coup.

“A lot of things have changed, and the regime has become more ruthless,” she stated. “The stakes are so high that I don’t really think Russians are ready now to speak out or go out onto the streets and protest.”

Now on Russia’s “terror” checklist, Ponomarev has turned himself right into a extremely seen goal.  But it doesn’t appear like he’ll be sticking his “aspen stake” into the regime’s coronary heart any time quickly.

“Maybe he thinks that he’s going to ride into Moscow on the back of an American or Ukrainian tank,” Oliphant stated. “I think that’s the only way he’d get there to be honest.”