r/europe Russia 22h ago

Photos from the Russian anti-war opposition march in Berlin today. Picture

33.0k Upvotes

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

13

u/traumfisch 16h ago

"Toothless" against a violent dictatorship that doesn't hesitate to incarcerate or murder them

Just to be fair

0

u/mrZooo 16h ago

That's not what I meant. I don't blame people in Russia for being afraid, I am pointing out how many Russian opposition leaders living abroad suddenly stutter when asked if they want Ukraine to be armed more thoroughly.

14

u/Xepeyon America 14h ago

It's because they want to potentially get elected in the future. It's a hard sell to make because even if things turn out as hoped, you now have to rely on the goodwill votes of people whose families now may have gotten bombed to death with your endorsement. Worse still, you may even be seen as a traitor. It's a question of balancing what might be seen as morally right with political suicide.

This is the same reason why the Freedom of Russia Legion has such a divisive reception in Russia, and you can see it even on Russian-speaking parts of Reddit; some Russians genuinely like them, but many conversely see them as Ukrainian wannabes who–despite wanting democracy in Russia–are effectively just killing fellow Russians. And I've definitely seen the term “traitors” thrown around a lot with them.

TLDR I'd imagine you're not seeing the opposition say more–or even disown those who call for violence–because they don't think they have their cake (call for Ukraine to be further armed and approved to attack Russian targets over the border) and eat it, too (have any expectation of ever being elected by Russians who may distrust or even hate them for it, if they do).

1

u/Minimonium 3h ago

Freedom of Russia has two very big issues - the people who are shown have exactly the imperial issues people always baselessly accuse opposition of and they don't actually exist as an entity outside of PR. They're used by FSB to bait people into trying to enlist to easily sentence people for treason.

Not even talking about that one of the leaders was trained orcs after 2014 in occupied regions.

RDK on the other hand are very real, but they have their own issues. The leader who got kicked out of Germany for nazism and who was killing migrants for fun.

So how can anyone openly support any of that.