The Former Russian Official Calling for a Coup Against Putin

This episode features Ilya Panomarev, a former Russian official exiled for his opposition to Vladimir Putin, discussing the need for a coup to restore democracy in Russia.

1. Ilya Panomarev argues that non-violent resistance is inadequate against Putin's regime.
2. He highlights the importance of international support for armed resistance within Russia.
3. Panomarev details his personal sacrifices and the dangers he faces as an opposition figure.
4. The discussion also covers the ethical considerations of targeting in armed resistance.
5. He emphasizes the need for a systemic overhaul in Russia post-Putin for genuine democratic governance.

1: The Catalyst for Resistance

Panomarev recounts his political journey from a business entrepreneur to an opposition leader due to the oppressive policies of Putin. He shares insights into his lone dissenting vote against Crimea's annexation. Ilya Panomarev: "If you would not vote against, you shouldn't come back home."

2: The Strategy and Ideology of Resistance

Discusses the strategic approach of the "Freedom of Russia" legion and the necessity of eliminating Putinism to ensure European peace. Ilya Panomarev: "The only way to bring peace is to eliminate Putin and his political system."

3: Life in Exile and Personal Risks

Details his life in exile, assassination attempts, and the personal cost of his political stance. Ilya Panomarev: "I was approached four times by assassins."

4: Vision for Post-Putin Russia

Panomarev outlines his vision for a democratic Russia, including drafting a new constitution and legal frameworks to ensure a transition from authoritarianism. Ilya Panomarev: "We need to propose a certain architecture to the people."

1. Support democratic resistance movements in authoritarian regimes.
2. Educate oneself on the realities of political dissent and its risks.
3. Advocate for international policies that support human rights and democracy.
4. Engage in discussions that promote a broader understanding of global political dynamics.
5. Contribute to organizations that provide aid to political refugees and exiles.

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it was the largest military attack on a European country since World War II. Reliable casualty figures are hard to come by, but U.S. intelligence officials estimated last year that as many as 500,000 Russians and Ukrainians had been killed in the conflict, with an estimated 15–30 million refugees.

Congress has allotted $175 billion in aid for Ukraine since the war began.

But Ilya Ponomarev says that cash and defensive weapons alone won’t liberate Ukraine or impede future Russian aggression. He insists that Vladimir Putin must be deposed by force. And he is actively working to do just that.

Ilya Ponomarev was a member of Russia’s Federal Assembly (Russia’s national legislature) from 2007 to 2016. He was the only member to vote against Putin’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. Exiled to Ukraine since 2016, he is the political head of the Freedom of Russian Legion, a paramilitary group made up of Russian dissidents and defectors fighting for Ukraine. He argues that nonviolent resistance is not enough and that radical steps are needed to overthrow Putin.

In today’s conversation, Ponomarev talks about his life as a dissident and what it is like being a target for assassination, his previous relationship with Putin, and why democracy has failed to take root in Russia.

People

Ilya Panomarev, Vladimir Putin

Companies

None

Books

"Does Putin Have to Die? The Story of How Russia Becomes a Democracy After Losing to Ukraine" by Ilya Panomarev

Guest Name(s):

Ilya Panomarev

Content Warnings:

None

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Today, that's Shopify.com system. From the free press, this is honestly I'm Michael Moynihan. Two years ago, Russia invaded Ukraine. It was the largest military attack on a european country since World War Two. Reliable casualty figures are hard to come by, but us intelligence officials estimated last August that as many as 200,000 Russians and Ukrainians have been killed in the conflict, with an estimated 10 million people displaced.

Michael Moynihan
Congress has allotted $175 billion in aid for Ukraine since the war began. But our guest today says that cash and defensive weapons alone wont liberate Ukraine or impede future russian aggression. He insists that Vladimir Putin must be deposed by force. Ilyaponomarev was a member of russian parliament from 2007 to 2016 and the only member to vote against Putins 2014 annexation of Crimea. Exiled to Ukraine since 2016, hes the political head of the Freedom of Russia legion, a paramilitary group made up of dissident Russians fighting for Ukraine.

He argues that nonviolent resistance is insufficient and that radical steps are needed to overthrow Putin. Panomarev is the author of the provocatively titled book does Putin have to die? The story of how Russia becomes a democracy after losing to Ukraine. In our conversation, we talk about Panamarevs life as a dissident and target for assassination. His previous relationship with Vladimir Putin in why democracy has stubbornly refused to take root in Russia.

Well be right back.

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Ilya Panamarov
Oh, well, I'm sitting here because you have invited me. Right? No, but seriously speaking, I always considered myself to be an entrepreneur. And who is the entrepreneur? It's the person who changes the world.

And I always wanted it to be the better place. And my childhood was at the time when it was the last years of the Soviet Union, and it collapsed right in front of my eyes. And at that time, I went into business. Technology, business computers, high tech stuff, because I believe that's where I will change the world. And when Vladimir Putin came to power, and there was no more illusions, and he disbanded the best russian tv station called NCV.

And at that time, my last business was supposed to be co invested by Ted Turner of CNL. And Ted volunteered to be the mediator between Vladimir Putin and the NCV guys. They're journalists. They got screwed up, obviously, for this left Russia, said, no more investments in Russia. So my business was screwed as well.

And I said, okay, so I have to get to politics and fix it myself. And since that time, I'm in politics. Vladimir Putin comes to power in 2000. You and your book reprint a speech that he gives to the Bundestag in Germany.

Vladimir Putin
Russia is a friendly european country. For our country, which has gone through a century of war disasters, the main goal is stable peace on the continent. Good Lord, that's a perfect speech. I agree with everything in it. Absolutely.

Ilya Panamarov
That's why I put this in my book. Did you believe this stuff at the time? Obviously, when you look now backwards, you understand that we all wore those frogs, which are being gradually boiled by Vladimir Putin. Obviously, at that time, I didn't feel like we are in a dictatorship or an authoritarianism. I just thought that it's a flawed democracy.

I thought that Vladimir Putin is just a servant of the oligarchs. And I still think, by the way, that that was the main reason why he was chosen to actually defend their property. But nevertheless, I thought that through elections, we will be able to fix it. And at that time, I joined the communist party, who was the main opposition to Vladimir Putin. Vladimir Putin always was very much to the right.

So I joined the left wing force. And we were thinking that in 2003, we'll be able to win the elections. But you don't lament the end of the Soviet Union, do you? No. I hesitated a bit.

Yes, I hesitated because I would say it's a controversial issue. So when there was a referendum in 1991 whether we should keep Soviet Union or not, I actually voted against keeping it. And at that time, I was very actively with the tricolor flag, the new flag of Russia, and 1991 and 1993, because, yes, I was for Yeltsin at the time. Now I think that the reason why the state collapsed was differently than what we believed in. And for many former soviet republics, that was a positive thing, because they felt themselves being a colonies and they became independent.

For Russians in Russia, that was a tragedy when they lost a lot and didn't gain much. And that was one of the reasons of this recentiment that we see now with Vladimir Putin. 2014, Russia annexes Crimea and Donetsk, Luhansk, the little green men who are fighting against ukrainian sovereignty. This is put up for a vote in the Duma. You voted against it.

No. You were the only person who voted against it. Right. Tell me about that feeling when you pushed that button and said, no, I'm not gonna stand for this. It was scary.

For two weeks before that, I actually did my best to avoid it somehow was calling all the phones that I. How do you try to avoid it? I was hoping that he's bluffing, because for me, it was illogical. It would be very bad for russian people. It would lead into the war.

It's a bloodshed. And I saw previously when under Medvedev, Russia invaded Georgia, still, it was something outside Russia with the Crimea, it was a direct annexation. So it was a real imperialistic act. And surely I was very much against. But I was thinking, so how to get around this, how to convince the leadership that it is a mistake.

And I can tell you that if it would not be my wife, I don't know how would I vote, but because I understand that it would be physically dangerous for my family. And leaving to the parliament that morning, March 18, 2014, my wife told me, if you would not vote against, you shouldn't come back home. And with that, she lifted the responsibility off my shoulders, that I shouldn't think about my family, that I should act just according to my principles. That's amazing. She told you, you're not going to come out if you vote for.

Bari Weiss
I mean, you sort of understand what kind of political culture you live in when you press that button and realize that you might no longer be a Russian in a way you might never see Russia again. It's actually funny because the guy. So we are sitting there on the benches. So there were two guys sitting next to me, and the guy who was sitting immediately next to me, when I was pressing the button, he tried to grab my hand and pull it off the button so that I. Did.

You know him. You were friendly with me. No, it's not friend. But obviously we're in one faction, so obviously I know him. So I had to press it with another hand, that button, and then grabbed my voting card so that he would not be able, you know, to press another button.

Ilya Panamarov
And he was saying, ah, what have you done? I will be arrested after that. And you know what? He was arrested. He was arrested, but you weren't.

I escaped because Putin is a mobster. He's a gangster. You know, this guy has a mobster psychology. He's like a good father of a gang in his eyes. I'm kind of a decent enemy.

I am a person who was against from the very beginning, even, say, Boris Nimtsov, a very dignified man. He was once in his camp and was one of his economic masterminds. And then he switched. For whatever reason, it doesn't matter. For Putin, that means that Boris is a traitor.

And that's why Boris was eventually killed. Myself, I was always against him. That's why he preferred just to kick me out of the country. But do not punish. I mean, I don't know how your wife or your family thinks about this, but, I mean, I go down the list of people that you've known, and you've been friends with Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov.

Bari Weiss
I don't know if you knew Alexander Litvinenko. He was my good friend. Yes. Good friend. The Skripals, I don't know if you knew them.

Annapoliskyla. They're all dead. They've all been murdered. So the long arm of Vladimir Putin reaches outside of the country. That's right.

So you're not really safe anywhere. Do you worry about this? I was already approached four times by the assassins. Explain that to me. Approach four times.

Ilya Panamarov
They tried. They tried to get me in Ukraine. Three times in Ukraine. Once outside Ukraine. Can you tell me where it was outside of Ukraine?

Bari Weiss
Prefer not to. No. Because, you know, I mean, we've had opponents of the Putin regime killed in Germany, in two. In the United Kingdom. No.

Ilya Panamarov
Right now, firstly, security forces are on high alert. Secondly, I have very good detail myself. It's expensive, though, isn't it? Yes, but some people help in this regard. I would actually prefer them to invest more money in the actual resistance fighting different people.

They have different preferences of what they are comfortable with spending on. The name of your book really shocks people sometimes. When I was reading that, somebody that I was with said, what is the. Name of that book? In the book, you talk about pretty radical solutions and say that sitting around and having interviews only and just little parlor games is not enough.

Bari Weiss
You can't just sit there and do nothing. What moment did you consider the nonviolent resistance of failure and decide that you had to move towards violent resistance? The decisive moment was 2012, and particularly the events on the 6 May 2012, before the third Putin's inauguration. That's when we had many people arrested, and that's when I decided, so this is it. We know that it's not working, and with the traditional russian liberals, it's not going to fly.

Ilya Panamarov
So we need to build something else. But obviously, again, as I said, people were not ready. But with the war, the situation changed dramatically. So 2012, you were out there in the street in these protests, and that failed basically, right? Yes.

Bari Weiss
And so now you're at the point of armed resistance. I would say that I myself personally, was always thinking that the armed resistance was more efficient against Putin, because Putin is a security guy. He's a security colonel. The guy's mindset is different. He would not be scared by just crowds on the streets, and he was never scared of that.

Ilya Panamarov
And I think that we all need to understand just one thing. By just giving money to Ukraine, helping Ukraine, we are doing the right thing, but we are treating not the origin of the war. The origin of the war is in Moscow. The origin of the war is with Vladimir Putin to stop the war. It's not enough to restore territorial integrity of Ukraine.

It's just that you are pushing the front line a little bit further eastwards, but it still would be the front line and missiles would still be flying. So the only way how to bring peace to Europe in general and to Ukraine in particular is to eliminate Putin and putinism, which is most importantly as a political system. So the movement is called the Russian Republican army, is that right? No, we have just different units. One of the units is called National Republican Army.

Bari Weiss
National Republican army? Yes, that's one of the units. And that's one of the urban resistance, urban guerrilla net. See, that makes you think of the irish Republican army. Yeah, I think that was the reason why.

That was the reason why. But the Irish Republican army targeted civilians. What are the targets that you think are actually acceptable? I mean, do civilians factor into this at all? No.

Ilya Panamarov
I am definitely very much against any acts of terror at any circumstances. And we have a political unit which is called Congress of people's deputies, which is like a shadow russian parliament. And it adopted so called act of resistance, where it actually discussed what ways of resistance are normal, acceptable, and which are not. Everything that is targeted against people who finance, organize, fight in the war is okay. That's even kind of intellectual.

Bari Weiss
Foot soldiers in the Putin army, like somebody like Alexander Dugin, for instance. Alexander Dugin is the person who says that he invented this war. He is the chief ideologue of this war. He openly says that he is a russian fascist. So that's why he's obviously a target.

Ilya Panamarov
It's very easy to see what is acceptable and what is not. Just draw a parallel with Nazi Germany. Alexander Dugin would be a type of the editor in chief of Volkes, Biar Bachter, the main SS newspaper. It would be like radio of thousand hills in Rwanda. You know, they are the warmongers.

They are as guilty as a particular security officer or soldier at the field. They all spill blood. When you saw the bomb go off that killed Dugan's daughter, how did you feel about that? Frankly, I felt bad about it, because obviously it's done by people in Russia. They were making these decisions by themselves.

They picked up the targets, obviously, again, they were targeting them both. What I learned later, I didn't know about them picking up that target. Dugen, Nadaria Dugen, the daughter of Alexander Dugin, was the same fascist. She was her father's operative. She was directly calling for assassination of Azov fighters in russian prisons and were unfortunately, successful in that.

And that was the reason, by the way, why she was chosen to be the target, because on her hands was death of 60 something. As of.

Bari Weiss
She was chosen as the target. It wasn't. It was reported initially that it was an accident that they were trying to target her father and they made a mistake. No, to my information, they both were targets. Just obviously, father was the primary target, and she was the secondary target.

Ilya Panamarov
And many people said, so maybe it's, you know, Lord interfered so that the father would suffer in the worst possible way, and he definitely deserves this. But she was not an innocent civilian. Are you a soldier? I enlisted in ukrainian army the very first day of war. Those first days when the russian military is trying to take Kyiv and thankfully failing, and you're out there helping to defend Kyiv.

Bari Weiss
What is the feeling going through your head when you think, you know, I am a Russian. I'm not a putinist I'm not part of this gangster regime in the Kremlin, but I am a Russian, and I'm going to be shooting a gun at Russians. I mean, how does that make you feel when you do that? You know, about this in particular? I feel nothing.

Really? Yes. And I explain you why, because this is something that digested and processed long time ago during World War Two. Would you consider, for example, Willy Brandt, the future councilor of Germany, to be the traitor because he was anti fascist and was inside the allied army fighting against Germans and killing Germans? No, obviously he was not a freighter.

Ilya Panamarov
He was anti fascist who was fighting with fascism. You have to have some sympathy, I'd imagine, at this point after Ukraine has become essentially a meat grinder for the russian army, where people are being called up and pulled out of little villages and prisons, too, but young people who have no interest in being there but are forced by the state to pick up a Kalashnikov and go to try to kill Ukrainians against their will. Right. I mean, that's kind of tough, isn't it? Some against their will, some not.

Bari Weiss
Some. Yeah. Many people are doing this just for money, and it's really bad. But actually, it's quite understandable because this state actually put russian people in such a misery that they actually are ready to shoot at their brothers, which speak the same language, the same religion, the same culture, and just because they need to feed their families and to survive. And some of them are even glad to die because then their family would get the insurances, which would help their wives and sisters and mothers to get a normal apartment and get a decent life.

Ilya Panamarov
And thats the motivation of a significant portion of the russian army. And I would actually say that there is one third of the russian army which are prisoners who want to get out of prison. Secondly, its those people who want to make money, and only one third are the people who were just drafted. Thats awful. But the nation needs to have a wake up call, and it's all result of Putin's actions.

Bari Weiss
What did you make of Vladimir Putin in your interactions with him? He's a brilliant psychologist. Just wonderful. The best. I know, the best communicator.

Ilya Panamarov
So when you're talking like this to him, you know, you feel like finally you found somebody who truly understands you better than your wife. Did you actually fall for that at some point because he was so good at it? No, I knew. You knew? I knew that that would happen, so I was kind of, like, ready for it.

Yeah, ready and exploring this and even getting pleasure when I resisted this, and he was shocked that I was resisting because these charms were not working. And at that moment, he was expecting me to ask something of him, and he wanted to recruit me. That was his objective. And when I said like this in his face, that we are still enemies and will be. What year was this?

That was 2013. So he'd already killed some of your friends? Yes. Dividenko in particular? Yeah.

And that's what I said. And so we were adversary enemies just at that time. Yet there was no war. And at that time, I managed to get a deal through him that he would allow the russian opposition to run for the local positions, local mayors offices. I always thought that that would be very useful because that would allow us to get experience and exposure.

So that was the point of our discussion. But we still. We were enemies. And that's what I told him. And he was kind of shocked because he was expecting me to ask him to actually make me a mayor.

So to falsify the elections in my. Favor, which many people, which everybody would do. Yes.

Michael Moynihan
After the break, Ilya and I talk about the current status of the war in Ukraine. We'll be right back.

Vladimir Putin
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Bari Weiss
I mean, there was a lot of excitement at the beginning that the Ukrainians were really punching above their weight and doing very well. Militarily that has kind of died down. And people have a sort of more depressed look at this now and said theyre going to lose territory. I mean, 18% of, I think, of the territory outside of Crimea is occupied by Russia right now. What do you make of the war at this moment?

Is it winnable if the appropriate munitions come in from the west? Look, altogether, the whole thing went way better than I expected it to go. In the very beginning, the very first night, I was personally ready to die. And I didn't think that we will see another day of light. Did you think you were going to die that night?

Ilya Panamarov
Yes, it was tough. And I think that we were pretty close to it because. And you saw combat that evening, close combat, rather than, you know, bombs falling on your head? No, we saw the combat, yes. And it was one of units within my regiment which went to fight in Hastomel airport, which was the key battle of the first two days, three days next to Kyiv.

Now we are at the stalemate. So if the same military assistance that is coming now would have been delivered to us in March 2022, we would be already in Moscow and the war would be already over. But now it's sort of world war one. Nobody's moving. Everybody's dying.

Yeah. Now it's world War one, and it's a verdant situation. And still there are way more people dying on the russian side than on the ukrainian side. But there is no significant movement. And Putin would be just trying to carve out certain additional territory for him to prepare for his anticipation that Trump would come to office and would force Ukrainians to make a ceasefire.

That's his best bet. That's his best case scenario. How do you think it ends? I think that he may just move ahead for another dozen kilometers and pay this with another 100,000 human lives, which is awful and terrible, but that does not create any strategic difference. So every dead Ukrainian is taking four lives of Russians with him.

That's going nowhere. And that's exactly why I am saying that we need to think about the revolt in Moscow. That's how the war would end. That's the most efficient weapon. That's the most efficient weapon in terms of human lives.

And thats the most efficient return on every dollar that we may spend on this war. There was a big debate in Congress about this funding, and this funding ultimately went through. And lets address the people on the left of the democratic party, because thats kind of your constituency, in a way. Youre a man on the left. People on the left of the democratic party say, this isnt our fight.

Bari Weiss
Why are we spending money in Ukraine, enormous amounts of money, when so many things in America need to get done, homelessness and welfare stuff, etcetera. Make the case to me that they're wrong, that american taxpayers should be putting up enormous amounts of money for the defense of Ukraine, and particularly when it's at a point of attrition. Well, look, when I hear the position of many people which claim themselves to be leftists across the globe, on Ukraine, on Israel, on many other matters, I feel ashamed that I am also leftist because I don't believe they are leftist. That's not leftist. Leftist is about power to the people.

Ilya Panamarov
It's about fighting the imperialism with arms, with all your might, with all your passion, fighting against inequality. And thats all what Putin is all about. Hes one of the wealthiest persons on this planet, which abuses other nations around him, and both inside Russia, which is undemocratic and as authoritarian that one can be. So every person who identifies himself as the left should see him as his enemy number one. I mean, whos a very conservative individual in so many ways when it comes to religion and things like that.

Bari Weiss
I mean, so its not surprising to me that people on the american right. For right, I have no surprises. Yes. Yes, for right. That's right.

Ilya Panamarov
Still, you know, I think that Putin is very hypocritical, but I at least can understand that Putin may present this image. So I understand that people may at least be fooled by this. But with leftists, I do not understand, because for me, the situation is crystal clear. One of the most popular videos on the Ukraine war that I've seen on YouTube is an american professor at the University of Chicago named John Mersheimer, who you've probably come across. John Mersheimer has a very long argument that says Russia has a right to do what it did.

Bari Weiss
The expansion of NATO and the threat of NATO expansion is putting pressure on Russia in their backyard. You would not like if they were doing that in Mexico or Canada or something, enemies on your border. So it's understandable. What do you make of that increasingly common argument that I hear in America now? Look, there is a fundamental contradiction to that argument, because when Putin was coming to power in the year 2000, his foreign policy agenda was based on exactly three pillars.

Ilya Panamarov
He wanted to become member of WTO, he wanted to become member of European Union, and he wanted to become member of NATO, which means that Putin himself never saw NATO as a hostile alliance to Russia. He started talking about this when it became useful for him for totally different internal political reasons. Actually, I always was totally for Russia becoming part of NATO. But when he was denied with his personal ambitions, then he started working against. So it's not a fundamental problem.

That's why these arguments that it was a threat. No, sorry, it's a bullshit. Why invade Ukraine and sacrifice so many russian lives and potentially destabilize your own government by making the russian people angry? I mean, remember, the numbers of people who died in the war in Afghanistan are percentage of the number of Russians who died. And that almost precipitated the end of the Soviet Union.

Bari Weiss
That was a very, very big problem for the soviet leadership. I mean, why take that risk? I mean, is it a desire to rebuild the Soviet Union in some sort of geographic way? I don't think so. I think it's just a vicious circle that Putin submerged himself to.

Ilya Panamarov
In the year 2005, his candidate running for ukrainian elections, Yanukovych, was kicked out by Maidan revolution. In 2014, the same Yanukovych for the second time was hosted by the same Maidan revolution. And that means it's a message for russian elites that Putin made the wrong bet, that Putin is mistaken, that Putin is not in control of the situation, and that's why he needed to do something bold to overcome this. And that's how the annexation of Crimea happened. And then tit for tat, you know, it was an escalation.

Ukrainians pushed back. Putin escalated, then it somehow subsided. But then Putin's popularity, which surged after the annexation of Crimea. We need to be frank about this. It started to go down again.

So he needed just another drug to be put into that system and to experience another search. Thats how the next confrontation with Ukraine came into the picture. Why is Russia seemingly so immune to democracy? There seems some special path in Russia that in 91, we were very excited, 93, the coup is put down, were even more excited. And then it all just goes to shit, and we get Putin, and we're almost 25 years into that, and we had the bolshevik revolution.

Bari Weiss
And that was a nightmare for most people. I would say the tsars were nightmares for most people. What is it about Russia that prevents democracy from taking hold? No, I think there is nothing special. Just bad luck.

Ilya Panamarov
No, it's not a question of luck. It's a question of logical result, of how the economy is structured. The foundation, the lifestyle is what is primary, and the political system is what is coming on top. Always. Democracy was sacrificed towards personal greed and ambitions and career inclinations and stuff like that.

That's why I think that, for once, that's why I was writing this book, is actually to design the system beforehand and with people who would not be personally benefiting from the system as those who would be coming in power. We drafted the new constitution. We drafted the first basic set of laws and drafting the new legislation for the new Russia, which would start working the very first day after the war. So our Congress of people's deputies is designed to be the transitional parliament, which would stop functioning after the transition period is over. And it's a short period of time.

It's two years after which the new constitution would be started. And actually, we're taking a lot of what we think positive lessons from the american political system, trying to avoid what we think is not working here. I got some advice on that. I several times worked in us political campaigns, even presidential campaigns. So we were consciously learning what is working and what is not working.

And now we are trying to implement those lessons there, but not to personally benefit, but to make our country prosper and our children to be able to find their place in that society. It seems all very positive, but isn't it a bit of a fantasy? How much support do you actually have? I mean, when you can sit down and write these plans? Very easy to write these plans and have these bull sessions at night and talk about political ideas significant at all.

No. You may consider me to be cynical, but the answer is that at this point, it doesn't matter if there was no war. We would need to build popular support, convince more people. But right now, we will be coming to the situation when the statehood would be in ruins. No matter what.

We need to build something new, and we need to propose certain architecture to the people and our way we want to design a new constitution is actually how it was done in Iceland, with crowdsourcing approach by many people. And then it would be adopted on the national referendum, which also would be the referendum for individual nations that currently live on the russian territory, when they can decide whether they want to stay or whether they want to leave, which is very important, because the country needs to be constructed on non imperialistic, voluntary basis. That's why we think that everybody would have the possibility to express their ideas during this transition period to design the new statehood. So every single voice would be heard. But you have a leader in Vladimir Putin, who has effectively shut down all opposition media, controls the courts, the judiciary, is entirely in the hands of the state, invades countries, participates in the 500, 600,000 dead in Syria, can poison people multiple times, can assassinate them in foreign countries and no one does a thing.

Bari Weiss
I mean, how do you dislodge a person like that? When the international community kind of shrugs their shoulders and says, you know, we can supply Ukraine with weapons, but even that comes up against resistance in most western countries. You know, yes, there is a problem because many countries, and first of all is the United States, are very shy to support this russian resistance. They find gazillion different excuses why it shouldn't be done. The government's not going to meet with you.

Ilya Panamarov
We meet in private with a lot of different people, but not officially, and they are very much afraid of showing any public support. They like people who do human rights things, maybe a little bit of counter propaganda, but those who have real role in actual resisting and fighting for freedom, no, they prefer to keep out. And the regime is actually way more fragile than it actually looks. And if you saw the mutiny that was done by Evgeny Prigoshein, that's the illustration of my words. I know many people in Washington DC after that happened.

I was saying this all the time, that if you have 5000 armed and trained people, you can actually go and capture Moscow and say, ah, it's a fantasy, you know, you are dreaming. And when they saw it, they actually called me and said, ilya, looks like you have a proof of your concept. You know, it was working. You're in the process of raising money and troops and support for something like that. No, exactly.

That's my. They will operate in Ukraine or in Russia? In Ukraine, that's what they do. Right now they are fighting. We already had several large scale military operations on the russian territory.

What I'm also saying quite often the international community and the United States in particular prohibits Ukraine to use long range missiles on the russian territory. So Russia can shoot on Ukraine, but Ukraine cannot reply. What Ukraine can reply with is drones. But for the drones to hit the target, you need to have actually foot on the ground. You need to have locals who would do the navigation, put the right coordinates and make sure that they hit the right target.

Who is doing this? It's Russians. It's our guys, it's our resistance people. How big do you estimate your force within Russia is? Approximately 10,000 at the moment.

Bari Weiss
10,000. And that's 10,000 people that are active in what, Facebook groups or VK groups or people that are actually doing. No, let's leave VK and Facebook groups for Navalny people. We're doing something different. You know, we're involved in derailing the trains, in attacking refineries.

Ilya Panamarov
So there was attack on Kremlin's dome, russian airfields, this kind of things. Many, many other stuff, like. But that attack on the Kremlin was your people. Yes. No, not mine, but people whom I.

Bari Weiss
Know who are involved in this, in this greater universe. Let's say that was mostly symbolic, right? We can hit you in the heart of the evil empire. Yeah. We wanted to show this, and we wanted to stop them conducting military parades on Red Square.

Ilya Panamarov
And after we did this, you know, there was just one t 34 tank of world War two, which they actually allowed themselves to put on the Red Square. What happens when your people within Russia are caught and arrested? We have long prison terms, but we don't have many, fortunately. But they are getting 25 plus years in prison. That's like current terms.

In Russia. We had several people who were shot. Just by the security forces. By the security forces during an attempted arrest. Right now, it's a handful of people, but the danger of being in a nonviolent protest is actually way higher than to be in the resistance.

We have the list of political prisoners in Russia. They consider that it's only non violent people can be considered political prisoners. You know, we obviously say that everybody who was acting on the political motivation is by definition as a political prisoner. But out of right now, 1500 political prisoners in Russia, only 150 were involved in the armed resistance, and the rest are nonviolent. So it's just 10%.

So it's way safer, actually, to do the real stuff. You hope to assassinate Vladimir Putin? I would prefer to see him in court. I would prefer to see him in the Hague, and I definitely would love to have an extended chat with him, but I am very much afraid that he would not survive to that moment, that his inner circle would not allow Vladimir Putin to survive to the fair trial. Ilya, thank you so much for joining us.

And honestly, thank you. Thank you as well. And it was my pleasure being here. And for all our viewers and listeners, helped russian resistance. That's the way we can establish peace.

Michael Moynihan
Thanks for listening. If you liked this conversation, if it made you think differently or challenged any of your formerly held beliefs, please share this episode with your friends and family and use it to have a conversation of your own. And if you want to support the work that we do here, there's just one way to do it. Go to thefp.com and become a subscriber today. See you next.

Bari Weiss
See you next.