Who’s Who In The Fractured Russian Opposition Fighting Against Putin

This article was originally published in Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL). Read the original article. 

By Steve Gutterman

Summary:

Long before Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian opposition had been struggling against a spiraling state clampdown on dissent – a campaign of oppression that stretched back at least as far as the quashing of street protests that erupted late in 2011, amid anger over election fraud and dismay at Vladimir Putin’s decision to return to the presidency after a stint as prime minister.

The clampdown tightened further when Russia launched the all-out war in February 2022. Two years later, Aleksei Navalny – the most prominent opposition leader for at least a decade and the head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which needled the Kremlin with frequent investigations detailing evidence of the extravagant misuse of public funds by Putin and his circle -- died in prison under suspicious circumstances. His widow and associates blame Putin for his death.

As its invasion of Ukraine grinds on, repression at home has increased still further, with the authorities seeking to stifle all dissent and quash any questioning of a war that has killed or wounded more than 1 million Russian soldiers. Numerous critics of the war are behind bars, but almost all of the most prominent opposition figures are abroad -- some fleeing in the face of prosecution, others released from prison and removed from Russia.

Exile has made the opposition’s struggle for relevance more difficult than ever – and frequent disputes between factions, such as an argument over a resolution aimed at giving Kremlin opponents a stronger voice at the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly (PACE), have not helped their cause.

Here’s a look at who’s who in the Russian opposition today, a week after PACE decided to create a "Platform for Dialogue" between the Assembly and Russian democratic forces in exile.

Yulia Navalnaya/Anti-Corruption Foundation

Three days after her husband’s sudden death in an Arctic prison, Yulia Navalnaya vowed to step up and continue his cause, urging Russians to share her “rage, fury, and hatred for those who dared to murder our future.”

Navalnaya chairs the advisory board of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, which is outlawed in Russia as an “extremist organization” but continues to operates from abroad. Other prominent Navalny associates with roles in the Anti-Corruption Foundation include Leonid Volkov and Maria Pevchikh. Longtime head Ivan Zhdanov was replaced in September after what he said were internal tensions, and the new CEO is Vladislav Romantsev.

Navalnaya, 49, was elected chair of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation in July 2024. She has joined with opposition activists Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza in organizing protests in Berlin against Putin and Russia’s war on Ukraine.

But Navalny’s allies have frequently clashed with other opposition figures.

The PACE initiative created a new bone of contention when a memorandum accompanying the declaration said that as of now, the FBK does “not qualify as Russian Democratic Forces as defined by the Assembly.”

Mikhail Khodorkovsky

Once Russia’s richest man and head of its top oil producer, Khodorkovsky fell afoul of the Kremlin during Putin’s first term, when he aired corruption allegations, challenged state control over energy exports, and funded opposition parties.

Arrested in 2003, he was convicted twice on charges he contends were fabricated. After 10 years in prison, he was freed and flown out of Russia following a pardon from Putin that was widely seen as PR ahead of the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

Now based in London, Khodorkovsky, 62, has continued his opposition to Putin. He founded Open Russia, which pursued a range of pro-democracy activities in Russia and was eventually banned there.

Days after Russia launched the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Khodorkovsky and other Putin foes -- including Garry Kasparov, Dmitry Gudkov, and Vladimir Kara-Murza – formed the Russian Antiwar Committee.

Khodorkovsky urged supporters to back Navalny’s bid to challenge Putin for the presidency in 2018. But a conflict erupted in 2024 when Navalny’s team accused Khodorkovsky associate Leonid Nevzlin of ordering violent attacks on top Navalny allies. Tensions persist, and Khodorkovsky sharply criticized the FBK as disputes over the PACE decision erupted.

Garry Kasparov

A chess grandmaster who reigned as world champion from 1985 to 2000, Kasparov has devoted himself to opposition politics for two decades. He was instrumental in creating the United Civil Front and a broader opposition coalition, Other Russia, one of the organizers of “Dissenters’ March” protests in the 2000s.

Kasparov sought to run for president in 2008 but withdrew after he was unable to rent a venue big enough to meet requirements for a gathering of supporters to get on the ballot, running up against the kind of tactics frequently used by the Kremlin to marginalize opponents and keep them out of elections.

A vehement Putin critic who opposed Russia’s takeover of Crimea and the invasion of Ukraine, Kasparov, 62, has lived in the United States for a dozen years.

In 2016, Kasparov co-founded the Free Russia Forum, which has held numerous opposition and antiwar conferences in Vilnius. The Russian state declared Kasparov a “foreign agent” in 2022 and branded the Free Russia Forum an “undesirable organization” in 2023.

In April 2024, a Russian court issued a warrant for Kasparov’s arrest on charges of creating and leading a “terrorist” group.

Vladimir Kara-Murza

Kara-Murza worked closely with Boris Nemtsov before the opposition politician was assassinated in 2015. He was a key advocate for the 2012 Magnitsky Act, US sanctions legislation that targets rights abusers and has inspired similar laws in Britain, Canada, the EU, and elsewhere.

A Russian-British citizen, Kara-Murza, 44, has spent much of his time in the United States. He was hospitalized on trips to Russia in 2015 and 2017, in what US authorities have investigated as cases of intentional poisoning.

Like Navalny, Kara-Murza returned to Russia despite risks. Shortly before his return, he accused the “dictatorial regime in the Kremlin” of committing “war crimes” in Ukraine.

Kara-Murza was arrested in April 2022 and was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison. He was one of 16 people freed from Russian custody in a prisoner exchange with the West in August 2024.

Vice President of the US-based Free Russia Foundation and a former coordinator at Open Russia, Kara-Murza has joined Yulia Navalnaya and Ilya Yashin in leading protests in Berlin against Putin and the war in Ukraine. In August 2025, he became “dissident-in-residence” at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.

Ilya Yashin

A Putin foe and peaceful street protester for decades, Yashin led a group of activists and journalists who completed a report on Russia’s involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine that Boris Nemtsov was working on when he was shot dead in 2015.

Yashin was the elected head of Moscow’s Krasnoselsky district from 2017 until 2021, when he stepped down amid mounting state pressure after being barred from running for parliament.

The authorities were tightening the screws further still after the arrest of Navalny, who once described Yashin as his “first friend in politics.” Yashin went on to protest Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine and, in December 2022, was sentenced to 8 ½ years in prison on charges stemming from YouTube posts in which he spoke about the killings of civilians by Russian troops in Bucha, outside Kyiv.

In court, Yashin urged Putin to "stop the madness" and end the war by withdrawing Russia's forces from Ukraine, adding: "Your name is now firmly associated with the words 'death' and 'destruction.'"

Yashin, 42, was one of 16 people released from Russian custody in the August 2024 prisoner exchange that included Kara-Murza.

Dmitry Gudkov

Gudkov was one of the last remaining liberal opposition politicians in the Russian parliament, holding a State Duma seat as an independent from 2011-2016. The son of Gennady Gudkov, a Soviet KGB officer who became an opposition lawmaker and Putin critic, Dmitry Gudkov was among the leaders of the 2011-13 Bolotnaya protests.

Gudkov left Russia in 2021, citing concern that he would be prosecuted in what he called a “fake criminal case” involving an alleged unpaid debt on a past rental property. He said people close to Putin’s administration had told him he would be arrested if he remained in the country.

A vocal critic of the invasion of Ukraine, Gudkov, 45, is a founding member of the Russian Antiwar Committee. He is also a co-founder of the Center for Analysis and Strategies in Europe (CASE), a Cyprus-based think tank.

Maksim Kats

The Moscow-born Kats emigrated to Israel with his family in childhood and returned to Russia in 2001, during Putin’s first term. A decade later, with opposition figures pushed to the margins, he -- like Yashin -- was at the center of a movement to gain a foothold in municipal politics, winning a seat in a Moscow district assembly in 2012.

Kats has helped manage election campaigns for opposition politicians including Navalny, whose strong second-place showing behind the incumbent in a 2013 Moscow mayoral election frightened the Kremlin, and Dmitry Gudkov.

Kats left Russia shortly before the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In August 2023, a Russian court sentenced him in absentia to eight years in prison over a video he posted on YouTube in April 2022 about the killings of civilians by Russian soldiers in Bucha, outside Kyiv.

Now based in Israel, Kats, 40, has more than 2.4 million subscribers to the YouTube channel he launched in 2010, which is focused on Russian politics. He has sought to build an opposition coalition but has clashed repeatedly with Navalny and his associates – including in 2024, when Kats claimed the FBK had tight ties to fugitive Russian bankers accused of fraud.

Grigory Yavlinsky

Yavlinsky, who remains in Russia, is an economist who gained prominence when he authored a “500 Days” plan in 1990 to shift the Soviet Union to a market economy. It was never put in place, and he criticized the “shock therapy” reforms launched by President Boris Yeltsin after the Soviet Union’s collapse.

Yavlinsky, 73, went on to co-found and lead the liberal opposition party Yabloko, and was a lawmaker in the State Duma in 1994-2003. His influence has faded: he received more than 7 percent of the vote in the 1996 presidential election and just over 1 percent in 2018 – though that result was compromised by claims of widespread fraud in Putin’s favor.

He has called Russia’s war against Ukraine a “crime against humanity” and said that for Russia, it is akin to a “self-imposed nuclear strike.”

Yavlinsky has clashed with other opposition leaders, some of whom have accused him of being soft on Putin. In 2021, he charged that Navalny’s Smart Voting initiative played into the Kremlin’s hands.

Yabloko still operates inside Russia. Several prominent members, including Lev Shlosberg, Maksim Kruglov, and Boris Vishnevsky, have faced prosecuted or pressure from the state in recent months.

Copyright (c)2025 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty  

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