“No leader forever in power”
Kremlin critic: If Putin is gone, the war will end tomorrow
08/20/2023, 1:58 p.m
Just because Putin keeps sending cannon fodder to the front doesn’t mean the war in Ukraine will end. The Russian opposition leader Volkov is sure of that. Instead, the regime around the Russian President must come to an end.
Leonid Volkov organized Russia’s opposition leader Navalny’s 2018 presidential campaign and until recently headed the International Anti-Corruption Foundation. In an interview with “Stern” he spoke about a possible end to the war in Ukraine and the Putin regime: “You always have to cause problems for Putin. No political leader stays in power forever, every authoritarian regime falls sooner or later. We have to regime will face difficult challenges, and one of those challenges will eventually break it.”
By this Volkov meant sanctions, arms deliveries to Ukraine and defeats at the front, as well as changing public opinion about Russia abroad. According to him, “10,000, 100,000 or a million Russian soldiers could die, but the war will not end because Putin will keep sending cannon fodder to the front. But when Putin is gone, the war will end, tomorrow.”
“Too much Putin understanding”
The assumption that Putin is playing for time and hoping for political changes in Western countries is wrong, emphasized Volkov. “I have too much Putin understanding with such thoughts,” he said. Such theses are grist to Putin’s mill. Hints that there are forces behind the scenes that really decide everything – this is how Putin imagines the world.
“He thinks: Draghi will be voted out in Italy and I will come to an agreement with the new government. In Great Britain the ‘hawk’ Boris Johnson will be voted out, I agree with the new government. He thinks the same way about the Republicans in the USA. ” But that’s not true, said Volkov. “There is a bipartisan consensus in the US to support Ukraine.”
According to Volkov, elections are no longer decisive in this case. “There is good and evil. There is an illegal war of aggression that cannot be justified by anything, an aggressor. The just end of this war can only be the defeat of the aggressor.”