On February 1, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation placed the Vilnius-based Free Russia Forum on the list of “undesirable organizations”. The reason for this measure, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, was “a threat to the constitutional order and security” of the Russian Federation.
The SDF held its first action in March 2016. Since then, the composition of Forum participants has been changed, refined and supplemented several times. For several years, Russian opponents based in Vilnius organize demonstrations which irritate the Russian authorities each time. But, as the correspondent of the Russian service media managed to find out, the FSR is not going to reduce its activity.
“We will continue to support the Free Russia Forum”
For example, Lithuanian MEP Andrius Kubilius of the European Parliament (Andrius Kubilius) believes: “In today’s Russia, freedom itself is undesirable, and (therefore) the Free Russia Forum is undesirable. Secondly, the Kremlin really thinks that democracy in Russia is a great threat to its authoritarian regime, and I see nothing new in the behavior of the Kremlin here, and one can only regret that Russian citizens have to live when the regime of the Kremlin believes democracy is in Russia is a threat to the state,” Mr. Kubilius shrugs.
The MEP adds: “Of course we will continue to support the Forum, as no new conditions have emerged. The fact that the Kremlin mentions certain names – “undesirables”, “enemies of the current regime” – is only confirmation that this Forum is an influential, significant phenomenon, and that the Kremlin is afraid of it. And that is exactly what we Western countries, including Lithuania, have to take care of! The West must help Russia and its citizens to return to this constitutional system, which would be based on democratic rules.
“This is an opportunity to inflict maximum damage on Putin’s criminal regime and help Ukraine”
Coordinator of the Activatica portal. org Evgenia Chirikova, believes that the Free Russia Forum should be “simply congratulated for being admitted” into the club of “undesirable organizations”.
“We have been in this status since the summer of 2020. And, frankly, it does not interfere with anything at all,” laughs Evgenia. And he continues: “Personally, I see this as an acknowledgment of merit – if we meddle so much with all these scoundrels that they recognize us as ‘undesirable’, if we are ‘undesirable’ for this regime, then we are doing the right thing. and good thing. And I support my colleagues with all my might – they are great guys, they make great forums, unite the opposition, and that’s great!
In a commentary for the media Russian Service, Yevgenia points out: “I really like the idea of uniting activists. Directly on the Forums (and I have been on all the Forums since 2016), we agree on specific topics. I have the honor of moderating panels related to civic activism, and the last panel was on the topic of the fight against mobilization and the wonderful project “Bring Light and Warmth to Ukraine”. Our foundation supported this project and the guys are now supplying generators directly to Ukraine. That’s what we did at the Forum – okay! And this is an opportunity to inflict maximum damage on Putin’s criminal regime and help Ukraine, which is now fighting for all of us. This is the most correct activity and the handshake.
“Over the past two years, several hundred Forum participants have left the country”
Free Russia Forum co-founder Ivan Tyutrin says the decision by the Russian Federation Prosecutor General’s Office was “quite predictable and expected” after he was granted “foreign agent” status, and all the actions of the Russian authorities indicated that obtaining the status of an undesirable organization “- It’s a matter of time.
“Therefore, it did not cause any surprises. Also, organizationally, we have been preparing for it and restructuring the working principles since the beginning of 2022. They have restructured our work as an opposition platform , especially on the basis of the fact that the principles according to which the Forum operated became dominant in the discourse of the Russian opposition,” is convinced Ivan Tyutrin.
And he adds that representatives of Russian political emigration, most likely, can be heard by representatives of Western political circles. “When we talked about the fact that Crimea had to be returned to Ukraine, the need to dismantle the regime, to restore the state, this position was considered too radical”, recalls the Russian opponent. “And now everyone is on these positions, and we think it’s the ideological triumph of our theses, and we continue our movement towards building this particular organization.”
Ivan Tyutrin also noted that since the end of 2021, i.e. from when the end of the Covid-19 pandemic was expected, around 70% of the permanent participants of the Free Russia Forum were activists from different Russian regions. “But we understand that now their public participation in Forum activities is simply dangerous for them. Therefore, we adapted to the environment of emigrants, but it turned out that over the past two years, several hundred Forum participants still left the country,” he noted. And he concluded that the most notable wave of emigration was after February 24, that is, after the announcement of the start of the Russian army’s “special military operation”.
“Therefore, we are not trying to work with the entire diaspora now, because in several countries initiative groups have been created from the permanent participants of the Forum, who are engaged in building regional branches . A Finnish initiative group has just expressed the wish to create a representative office of the Free Russia Forum. And we will appoint groups of coordinators, it will be a collective body in each country, and carry out common activities. We have a very large congress planned for the autumn in Lithuania, where the delegates representing our departments will already meet”, summed up Ivan Tyutrin.
