Russian Guerrillas Don’t Get Along Well
At least two different guerrilla groups claimed responsibility for radical anti-regime actions inside Russia, but they don’t seem to be friends with each other. Is any productive cooperation still possible?
When Darya Dugina, a Russian propagandist and daughter of Aleksandr Dugin, the key thinker of modern version of Eurasianism that underlies the Kremlin’s ideology, was killed on August 20, 2022, in a car explosion outside of Moscow, the next day the National Republican Army (NRA), a heretofore unknown partisan group, claimed it stands behind it.
The group also published a manifesto, which consisted of general phrases that could be replaced with a simple sentence like “We stand against Putin”, so no wonder conspiracy theories immediately popped up suggesting that the group didn’t exist and the manifesto was made up by Ukrainian or Russian security agencies — depending on the commentator’s preferred side.
However, on August 31, in Irpin near Kyiv, the NRA supposedly signed a declaration on cooperation with the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, the two units fighting on the Ukrainian side. This looked like a confirmation of the NRA’s actual existence.
But what made me wonder was that this cooperation of Russians fighting the Putin’s regime inside and outside Russia did not include another group that had claimed responsibility for sabotage actions earlier this year: the Anarcho-Communist Combat Organization aka BOAK.
So I went to their Telegram channel to see if they had something to say about the NRA. By the way, the channel with the group’s name was created in March 2022, but another one run by the same people has existed since October 2018.
And indeed, there is a post from August 22 where the BOAK condemns the murder of a “defenseless woman” and rails against those who rejoice at her death and make fun of her father.
They say it would be justifiable to murder a general, a high-ranking official, or a top propagandist, maybe even Dugin himself, but for some reason ignore the possibility of him being the actual target. (He mentioned in his statement that it had happened right in front of his eyes, apparently meaning he was following her in another vehicle and probably was originally supposed to be in the car that exploded.)
They also recognize that Darya was a propagandist like her father and that she approved murders of Ukrainian civilians, but forget to mention that she was one of the leaders of the Eurasian Youth Union and often appeared on Russian state TV channels, which already makes her a “top propagandist”, and that she visited Ukrainian occupied territories including Mariupol, which means she was really actively involved in the war, even if not directly in the army.
The anarcho-communists also mention the NRA manifesto calling it a “shining example of eclecticism with a bias for postmodernism”. They state that it’s not clear what is meant under “Republican” in the group’s name, but also think that the authors of the manifesto can’t ignore anarchist ideas and that they give a wink to liberty lovers when they offer a “society where the power will belong to the people and where citizens will elect their leaders and organize the life of their towns and villages”.
At the end of this rather inconsistent statement the BOAK says they are on the same side with the NRA but emphasizes that not every method is equally good.
So, they are “on the same side”, but the tone is rather critical and even slightly haughty: we are more virtuous, our ideas are superior and you can’t ignore them. There doesn’t seem to be any contact, let alone coordination between the two groups. But is it necessary? Could cooperation yield sensible results? And can the lack of cooperation be disastrous?
Of course, anarchists usually don’t readily team up with other groups. One can even say that independent, decentralized actions are better aligned with anarchist ideas, and moreover, in case the FSB tracks down one group, they will not automatically get access to the other one.
And isn’t pluralism of opinions and political factions a sign of democracy? Yes, but the problem is Russia isn’t a democracy, and trade-offs and compromises may be needed to fight the common enemy.
Even if we ignore the anarchists, the Russian liberal opposition wasn’t united before the war either. Although Alexei Navalny was the most popular leader, many liberals were critical of him or even openly said they couldn’t stand him and would never support him.
And after Ilya Ponomarev, a former member of the Russian parliament and now a Ukrainian citizen, published the NRA manifesto, he was expelled from the Russian Action Committee, a coalition of the Russian opposition in exile. Thus, the “good Russians” living abroad have de facto distanced themselves from those fighting the regime inside Russia (and I don’t think they are on friendly terms with the anarchists either). I wonder, if those radical groups achieve any success, how soon that “peaceful opposition” will return to Russia to reap the fruits they have nothing to do with?
And imagine Putin is somehow removed from power and there’s a democratic election, but the opposition fails to unite and cooperate, and thus some Putin’s crony or just another imperialist gets the majority of votes. Now Russia will have a new dictator, and a democratically elected one. This isn’t so unrealistic. That was one of the reasons why Viktor Yanukovych was elected president of Ukraine in 2010.
As a Ukrainian, I primarily want Russia to get out of my country and leave us alone. With reformed, democratic Russia the world would be better, but that’s up to the Russians themselves. What I see so far isn’t really reassuring.
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