Yulia Navalnaya’s entry into the leadership of the movement created by her husband Alexei Navalny is an opportunity to unite the until now divided opposition to Vladimir Putin, said the founder of the Russian Democratic Association in London, Ksenia Maximova
The former model and political activist stated that, until now, the Anti-Corruption Foundation created by Navalny in 2011 has refused to collaborate with other organizations opposing the government of the current Russian president.
“We have to see what Navalny’s team, now under the leadership of Yulia, will do, because as much as we all work together and many other opposition leaders work together, we had a little difficulty in starting a dialogue with them”, lamented.
In an interview with a group of journalists in London, including Agência Lusa, Maximova revealed that there has been an effort for different organizations challenging Putin abroad to collaborate, with the exception of the Anti-Corruption Foundation.
“They seemed to be doing their job and everyone else seemed to be doing their job.
I hope that now, with Yulia in charge, they will rethink this and that we can join our efforts, because that would be very powerful”, said Maximova.
The activist states that the Russian opposition benefits from being united and around a figure to facilitate contacts with international governments because “no one wants to talk to a group of people, a coalition, because it is much more complicated and confusing”.
“I hope that, from now on, we will all be able to sit down together and start the democratic process” of choosing a potential opposition leader, he stressed.
Born in Russia, Ksenia Maximova, now 38, was recruited at the age of 16 in Moscow to work in the fashion world, which she did at a high level, becoming a model for brands such as Gucci.
Navalny, she told Lusa, was the inspiration that led her and many other Russians to organize abroad, in 2021, to protest once morest political oppression in Russia and, more recently, once morest the large-scale military invasion of Russia. Ukraine, in 2022.
Since then, the Russian Democratic Association, which Maximova founded in London in 2016, has dedicated a great deal of time to helping the “many Russians” who choose to flee abroad, whether due to political persecution or to avoid conscription. fight.
The help can be financial or psychological, because “they lost their identity, they lost their country”. The Association also organizes regular protests at the Russian embassy in London and other events, such as debates and cultural events.
However, sanctions on Russian organizations and individuals and hostility towards the Moscow regime are affecting opponents abroad, particularly in the United Kingdom, Maximova complained.
The Association’s bank account has been suspended several times, forcing it to change its name to an acronym without the problematic reference to Russia, a situation that is also happening to ordinary citizens with Russian names.
“People are constantly having their bank accounts blocked and having difficulties with their professional accounts. Many are not even asylum seekers, they are people who are here on an international talent visa, who have every right to be here and deserve to live a normal life,” she argued.
In other countries the situation is much worse, depending on the political environment, including Argentina, where there are reports of physical attacks.
“It’s not easy being a Russian abroad nowadays”, he confessed. Even so, the activist understands that the Russian diaspora has an obligation to make the voice of opposition to Putin heard because, morally, she considers it wrong to ask people in Russia to speak out publicly, as they are in danger.
“It is highly irresponsible. We know that this regime will not stop and, if it does not put people in prison, if there is a mass protest, the probability of shooting people is very high,” she acknowledges.
Personally, Maximova considers that the death of Alexei Navalny in prison in February, for which his widow and supporters attribute responsibility to the Russian president, was a “huge strategic error” that he compared to kicking a hornet’s nest, warning: “It angered people who were already mobilized and angry.”