“Why is Russia’s PACE Platform, which is supposed to represent the Russia of the future, populated by its past?”

On 29 January 2026, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) held its first meeting involving the Platform for Dialogue between the PACE and Russian Democratic Forces in Exile (RDFE). The launch of the Platform was announced in October 2025.

According to PACE’s concept, the Platform’s 15 members — five of whom represent Indigenous peoples of Russia — are meant to be “persons of the highest moral standing” who share the values of the Council of Europe, unconditionally recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, and work toward regime change in Russia. They were granted the opportunity to discuss issues of common interest with the Assembly and to participate in meetings of certain PACE committees.

Each year, the lineup of the RDFE Platform will be completely renewed. In addition, a separate platform is to be created to engage with the oppressed peoples of Russia. The first RDFE Platform lineup, announced on 26 January 2026, was selected from a long list of candidates by PACE President Theodoros Rousopoulos and approved by the PACE Bureau.

The result of this well-intentioned initiative — to establish a formalized dialogue with the Russian opposition in exile and give anti-war Russians a voice on a European institutional platform — was met with widespread criticism. Apart from that, it triggered new rifts within the Russian opposition itself, which was already far from unified.

REM outlines the main points of criticism and examines the Platform's initial lineup.

Main Criticism: Lack of Legitimacy

Many commentators and experts pointed out the lack of political legitimacy of the Russian “delegation” to PACE.

The Platform is inevitably compared to the representation of the Belarusian opposition in PACE — and this comparison does not favor Russia. Unlike the Belarusian opposition led by Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who de facto won the 2020 presidential election, Russian opposition figures do not possess comparable representative legitimacy.

Although the Russian opposition in exile includes well-known politicians and activists — such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Garry Kasparov, Dmitry and Gennady Gudkov, Yevgenia Chirikova, and others — few of them have ever held seats in legislative bodies. The main exceptions are the Gudkovs, father and son, who served as State Duma deputies, as well as several former deputies of regional (for example, Sergey Antonov) and municipal councils (candidates affiliated with the European Choice of Russia Association: Helga Pirogova, Igor Glek, Svetlana Utkina, Nikita Kirillov, and Elena Filina).

None of the former parliamentarians, except Dmitry Gudkov, made it into the platform's first lineup. This further strengthened the position of those who claimed that the members of the Platform “represent no one but themselves”.

Voices from Russia: "It's some kind of bullshit"

Among opposition politicians who remain in Russia, the process of forming the RDFE Platform has generated little enthusiasm. For example, no posts about the RDFE Platform appeared on the social media accounts of former Russian presidential candidate Boris Nadezhdin. Another former presidential candidate, Yekaterina Duntsova — leader of the unregistered party Rassvet — sarcastically commented while presenting the party’s first candidates for the 2026 State Duma elections: “While some are fighting for seats in PACE, Russian politicians are heading to the State Duma.”

The media outlet Meduza published the opinions of several Russian opposition politicians living in Russia. They generally agree that the RDFE Platform may be useful for anti-war Russians who have left the country, but that its activities will have no real impact on what is happening inside Russia: “How can a dialogue between Europeans and the opposition [lt]…[gt] change the situation in Russia? Change in Russia will happen in Russia, not abroad”. Another Meduza source summed it up more bluntly: “It’s some kind of useless bullshit”.

A separate point of criticism concerns the Moscow-centric nature of the RDFE Platform. Most candidates seeking to represent Russians in this new body come from Moscow’s opposition circles. Many of them have little understanding of life in Russia’s regions and therefore cannot adequately represent the country as a whole. This imbalance in favor of Moscow and Saint Petersburg politicians deprives other regions and Russia’s national minorities — including Indigenous peoples — of fair representation.

Moreover, for many representatives of indigenous peoples, Moscow politicians are yet another embodiment of Russia’s imperial ambitions. The most uncompromising independence movements — such as the League of Free Nations and the Chechen Movement United Force — have stated that they do not consider themselves part of the “Russian liberals” and are waiting for the creation of a separate platform for direct dialogue with PACE. The establishment of a separate Platform for dialogue with representatives of Indigenous peoples and national minorities of the Russian Federation (IPNM Platform) is provided by paragraph 10 of PACE Resolution 2621 (2025).

Dissatisfaction with both the untransparent process of forming the RDFE Platform and its lineup has also been openly expressed by more moderate organizations, such as Committee-2024, which brings together opposition politicians from Russia’s regions.

“A platform intended to represent all Russian democratic forces will, in fact, represent only 32% of the population — residents of the capitals and national republics. Nearly 100 million people living in Russia’s regions — the Urals, Siberia, the Far East, the Volga region, and the South [lt]…[gt] — will be left without a voice”, said in an open letter Sergey Antonov from Committee-2024.

Antonov proposed limiting representation from Moscow and Saint Petersburg to 15% of the total number of seats. No response from PACE representatives followed. As a result, not a single representative from non-national regions was included in the first lineup of the RDFE Platform. One Committee-2024 candidate, Ruslan Kutaev, was selected within the Platform’s “national” quota.

The Kremlin Responds with Criminal Cases and Threats

The formation of the RDFE Platform did not go unnoticed in the Kremlin. Just days after the launch of the initiative was announced, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) opened criminal cases against Mikhail Khodorkovsky and 22 other members of the Anti-War Committee, accusing them of plotting a violent seizure of power and of establishing a terrorist organization. The FSB’s website explicitly states that the criminal proceedings are a response to their active involvement in the creation of the Platform.

Vasily Piskaryov, head of the State Duma’s Committee on Security, labeled the members of the RDFE Platform “traitors” and threatened them with criminal prosecution for “any assistance in implementing decisions of international organizations in which Russia does not participate, or for helping to draft anti-Russian proposals, including those related to the introduction or extension of sanctions”.

The main problem (as always) — Conflicts within the Russian opposition

The decision to establish the RDFE Platform was the result of lengthy negotiations that had been ongoing since 2022. On the Russian opposition’s side, four groups were involved in the talks: the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, known in English as ACF), the Free Russia Foundation (FRF), the Anti-War Committee of Russia (AWCR), and the Free Russia Forum (FRF). However, this coalition fell apart shortly after the launch of the RDFE Platform formation process was announced.

The first serious challenge for the not-yet-created RDFE Platform came when supporters of Alexei Navalny refused to participate. They argued, among other things, that the procedure for forming the Platform “does not meet basic democratic principles” — relying on appointments rather than elections — and that it prioritizes certain potential candidates over others. In particular, ACF representatives criticized the requirement that candidates who had not signed the so-called Berlin Declaration, drafted by the Anti-War Committee of Russia, would be ineligible for the Platform. The ACF has long-standing ideological disagreements with the AWCR.

At the same time, the ACF remained arguably the only organization that had real legitimacy in pre-war Russia. Its leader, Alexei Navalny, was widely recognized as the country’s leading opposition politician of the past decades. Before being dismantled by Russian security services, the ACF also had the most extensive network of regional offices, operating in 80 regions across Russia. Lyubov Sobol, a former ACF lawyer, was included in the first lineup of the RDFE Platform.

The second blow to the still-unformed RDFE Platform was an internal conflict within the Anti-War Committee of Russia — between Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kara-Murza. In December 2025, during a joint dinner, Kasparov reproached Kara-Murza for failing to sign the Berlin Declaration and made several personal attacks against him. In response, Kara-Murza announced his withdrawal from the AWCR.

According to Meduza, the Kasparov–Kara-Murza conflict was not merely a trivial interpersonal dispute but rather a reflection of an internal struggle for influence within the future Platform. Mikhail Khodorkovsky is often described as the Platform’s key initiator. In December 2025, FRF president Natalia Arno revealed that Khodorkovsky had proposed “monopolizing” the first lineup of the Platform by submitting a single coordinated list of candidates from three organizations: his Anti-War Committee of Russia, Garry Kasparov’s Free Russia Forum, and Natalia Arno’s Free Russia Foundation. Arno rejected this proposal.

Nevertheless, this did not prevent representatives of these three organizations from securing 6 out of 10 seats in the “Russian” segment of the RDFE Platform. One seat each went to representatives of Memorial, the ACF (with Lyubov Sobol formally running as an independent), and the Forum of the Russian Opposition in Support of Ukraine. The final seat was taken by Pussy Riot activist Nadezhda Tolokonnikova.

The full list of candidates was never made public, as not all nominees announced their candidacies openly. The most comprehensive published list includes around 80 names. From this pool, 15 people — including five representatives of Indigenous peoples — were selected to represent anti-war Russians at PACE for a one-year term.

Who was selected for the Platform?

On 26 January 2026, PACE announced the 15 selected representatives to participate in the Platform for Dialogue between the PACE and Russian Democratic Forces in Exile (RDFE).

For the next year, the Platform will be represented by:

1. Natalia Arno — President of the Free Russia Foundation

2. Dmitry Gudkov — politician, member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia

3. Mark Feygin — lawyer, nominated by the Free Russia Forum

4. Vladimir Kara-Murza — politician, Vice President of the Free Russia Foundation

5. Garry Kasparov — politician, former world chess champion, nominated by the Free Russia Forum

6. Mikhail Khodorkovsky — politician and businessman, member of the Anti-War Committee of Russia

7. Oleg Orlov — human rights defender, co-chair of the Memorial Human Rights Defense Center

8. Andrey Volna — physician and volunteer, nominee of the Forum of the Russian Opposition in Support of Ukraine

9. Lyubov Sobol — public figure, associate of Alexei Navalny, self-nominated

10. Nadezhda Tolokonnikova — feminist activist and performance artist, self-nominated

Representatives of Russia’s Indigenous peoples selected for the Platform:

1. Ruslan Kutaev — political scientist and civic activist, former Vice Prime Minister of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria

2. Ekaterina Kuznetsova — artist, director of the House of Ingria in Narva, Estonia

3. Vasily (Matyune Batlay) Matenov — founder of the public platform Asians of Russia

4. Lana Pylaeva — editor-in-chief of Komi Daily and Komi activist

5. Pavel Sulyandziga — Udege activist and human rights defender

“Why is Russia’s PACE platform, which is supposed to represent the Russia of the future, populated by its past?”, commented Alexandra Garmazhapova, founder of the Free Buryatia Foundation, on the nomination process. Against the backdrop of internal conflicts within the opposition, Garmazhapova herself withdrew her candidacy for the RDFE Platform.