Living in Exile

WBJ Observer had the chance to talk to Ilya Ponomarev during the Warsaw Security Forum. He is the only member of the Russian State Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea in 2014, he now lives in exile in California Interview by Santiago de la Presilla How does it fell to be the only member of the State Duma who voted against the annexation of Crimea? The vote was 445-1. Why did you vote against it? Ilya Ponomarev: It’s my job to vote to represent my constituents. I consulted people on how I should vote and I saw that amongst my voters there was virtually a 50-50 split. My personal position was that this would lead to an inevitable war and of course I always thought that a war with Ukraine, our closest ally and the country most related to us, is just inconceivable. That’s why I voted against the annexation. Do you still consider Ukraine an ally of Russia, at least to a certain extent? Right now we’re not allies by definition, we’re at war. However, it’s still the closest country to us, we’re the closest relatives. I think that Putin will eventually go and that our relationship will be restored. What happened after you voted against the annexation? What was the reaction of the media and your colleagues? Of course there was a lot of pressure, some of my colleagues actually expressed a very contradictory reaction because they were simply jealous. They were saying: “You bastard, you will come out clean and we’ll be compromised forever! We’ll be denied entrance to the west,” but you know, they should’ve had the courage to do the same if they were against the annexation, as well as understanding the consequences. What can I say? Now that Ukraine’s relatively quiet, compared to last year at least, what are your thoughts on Russia’s intervention in Syria? This all looks like it came out of nowhere. Well, the reason is pretty simple. You pointed out a very important thing, that this all happened very suddenly. That means that Russia’s foreign policy is very unpredictable. This is very bad. Foreign policy has to be consistent and it has to be predictable, otherwise a country will always be seen as a dangerous player, and I’m sorry to say that we are very much a dangerous player in the international arena. Again, Putin wants to shift public opinion inside the country to distract the population from the economic hardship that they are living through. Isn’t public opinion of Putin already extremely high? Yes, it is high. However, he needs to sustain it, it’s obvious that the situation in eastern Ukraine has come to a dead end. It’s just not going anywhere and by switching to Syria, he acknowledges that he’s failed in eastern Ukraine, so he’s merely trying to replace one with the other, just to sustain public opinion. So far he’s been successful. Do you really think that the intervention is going to last three or four months, like Russia’s Foreign Minister, Lavrov said? These are groundless expectations. When the war in Chechnya started I remember how, at that time, defense Minister Pavel Grachev said that it would be a one – month operation at most. The same thing when we entered Afghanistan, it wasn’t expected to turn into such a long and bloody exercise. I’m afraid that the same will happen in Syria. So to a certain extent, do you think that Russian foreign policy is too improvised? Improvised is the correct description. Putin is extremely tactical, his predictions are very spontaneous, he’s extremely shortsighted. He makes decisions based on the current situation with very little planning, and that’s dangerous. All foreign policies are long term by definition, you shouldn’t swing from one extreme to another in a matter of minutes. Have you tried returning to Russia? What are the actual charges against you? If I was to return I’d be arrested immediately. They’re trying to prove that I was involved in assisting someone to misappropriate Skolkovo Foundation funds – they recognized that I never physically touched the money so they can’t blame me directly. They’re accusing me of doing some work that was considered “too expensive.” It doesn’t really matter because they can’t blame me for working. Has somebody else from the foundation been charged? Yes, the irony of the situation is that when they originally opened a criminal case against this guy [Alexei Beltyukov], they were not targeting him, but Surkov, the Deputy Prime Minister at that time. Myself, just like everyone else, we were just collateral damage. Surkov then became Chief of Operations against Ukraine, he was acquitted personally by Putin, then they shut the whole thing down. Beltyukov was later released and is also living in the US. I really feel sorry for him, he’s a good guy. [negative]In Russia we have a saying: For not being guilty, you'll be sentenced to two years[/negative] What are the chances of the charges being dropped? They are minimal because our system never admits to being wrong. In Russia we have a saying: “For not being guilty, you’ll be sentenced to two years.” If you’re in the system, even if you’re not guilty, you’ll always be charged for something. In retrospect, after this witch-hunt, do you regret voting against the annexation? Of course not. I regret what’s happening in my country, that’s what I regret. But as I said, I treat it as my job, this decision is not really about that particular vote. I made this decision when I decided to go into politics, I began in politics 15 years ago. My parents always told me that I should’ve left Russia and made a successful business career, because before that I’d had a very successful career – I was vice-president of Yukos, the largest corporation in Russia. I actually got bored, I was thinking: “So I’m vice-president of the largest corporation in Russia, what’s next? I can sit for another 20 years and become the CEO,” but I wanted to pursue something different. So what was it that finally made you run for office? There was a particular trigger event, when in 2001, Vladimir Putin started to campaign against MTV, it was like a major assault on the freedom of speech. I recognized that this would be bad for the country and that’s when I decided to go into politics to prevent this. And if you look at the state of Russian media today… Again, I see that I was right. I couldn’t do anything to prevent it, unfortunately, as everyone else was making “compromises” but at least I tried. My conscience is clear, I did the best I could to prevent all this. This event wouldn’t be happening if it wasn’t for Russia’s actions in Ukraine. Do you think NATO has cause for concern? A lot of people say that NATO countries shouldn’t worry since Russia is not capable of defeating the Alliance. I think that NATO should be worried, probably not Poland, but the Baltic states should definitely be worried. I don’t see any potential negative developments for Poland in particular, because of geography, but the Baltic states are vulnerable. The problem is that if something happens, it will not be military aggression. Even in Ukraine you can see that one of the sources of these endless arguments is not that there is out-and-out fighting in Ukraine, it’s a covert security operation. Putin is not a military guy, he’s a security guy, he’s a KGB officer – the bulk of the military force there are rebels, they’re supported by Russian military, trained and supplied by Russian military, but the Russian military themselves represent a tiny portion of the fighters in the area. In Syria it’s the same thing – Putin is bombing the moderate Syrian opposition to allow Assad to use his army to attack ISIS. Taking all of this into consideration, how do you see Russia in 5 or 10 years? The next five years are totally unpredictable. Ten years from now, I’m 100 percent sure Putin will be gone and the country will return to its normal developmental path. I think that there could be very unpredictable and dangerous developments on the way. The prospects of the Novorossiya people, the people fighting in Ukraine, that they could come to power in Russia. That’s my fear. Putin has done everything to promote these groups of people as well as to direct public attention in their direction. I’m not sure that Putin is capable of controlling this.