I’m a Russian dissident living in London. Putin knows the end is coming soon

9 comments

1. [Vladimir Putin](https://inews.co.uk/topic/vladimir-putin?ico=in-line_link) has one trait well known to Russians: he ruthlessly crushes political opponents, yet always invents “non-political” pretexts for doing so.

   For rulers like him, academics Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman coined the term “spin dictators” — people who conceal the [authoritarian and unlawful nature of their power](https://inews.co.uk/news/world/how-putin-crushed-all-resistance-in-russia-and-secured-total-power-3904405?ico=in-line_link).

   I spent more than ten years in Putin’s prison for calling him and his inner circle thieves and corrupt officials to their faces. But my criminal case consisted of hastily fabricated economic charges.

   Over the course of ten years, I was held in prisons located in some of the most remote parts of Russia — from a colony on the border with Mongolia to one on the border with Finland. I survived an attempt on my life when a cellmate stabbed me in the face. And four times, I put my life on the line myself when I went on a dry hunger strike, ready to die if my demands were not met.

   All of Russia and the entire world clearly understood that this was the persecution of a [political opponent](https://inews.co.uk/news/uk/russian-anti-putin-protester-dead-london-after-asylum-bid-rejected-3866320?srsltid=AfmBOop_5ols-KZIxBS72Inn7U-IsJRKURWSuXhSKsOHqcghSe0058lB&ico=in-line_link). But throughout all ten years of my imprisonment, Putin stubbornly denied any political motivation behind my prosecution.

   So imagine my surprise when, two weeks ago, I learned that the FSB had announced that I and 22 of my colleagues from the Russian Anti-War Committee, the opposition group I founded in 2022 with other prominent pro-democratic Russians, were supposedly planning to seize power in Russia.

   Has the Russian secret political police really dropped its mask and officially filed a political accusation? It’s a remarkable and new kind of candour. The FSB now openly admits that there are Russians dissatisfied with those in power and that the desire for a change of government, something entirely normal in any democracy, is a crime in Putin’s Russia. Their statement even cited the Anti-War Committee’s Berlin Declaration from 2023, where we called for the liquidation of the Putin regime.

   Of course, the statement announcing our supposed plan for a coup also includes the usual portion of lies — about our alleged preparation for an armed overthrow of Putin, “participation in a terrorist organisation”, and “financ[ing] [Ukrainian](https://inews.co.uk/topic/ukraine?ico=in-line_link) paramilitary nationalist units”.

   We are not engaged in any of this. But there is also a rather honest explanation contained within the FSB’s statement for why Putin has become so angry with us:

   “In October 2025 … a so-called ‘Platform of Russian Democratic Forces’ was established within the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe [Pace]. Mr Khodorkovsky presented this platform to Western countries as a ‘constituent assembly of the transitional period’ and an alternative to the authorities of the Russian Federation.”

2. Why the sudden rush in Russia’s about to collapse articles? What changed to a week ago?

   I’d like to see Russians protesting and removing Putin from office and I’ll even take a coup, but I currently just don’t see it happening.

3. there’s a new “russia/putin is finished for sure, this time” article every 3 days or so. as much as i want it to happen, ill believe it when i see it.

4. A coup can only happen when there is a candidate for the position but at the moment I don’t know of any possible replacement

5. You are putting the “china collapse imminent” people to shame

6. I’ve seen the same article every week for the past 4 years.

7. This is the geopolitical version of “markets can stay irrational longer then you can stay solvent” what I think is likely to happen is we’ll see a market collapse in the near future and a bunch of these hot spots will experience a rapid period of instability or change. We all keep waiting for the other shoe to drop with markets, conflicts, politics and I think all of these things will happen all at once when one of these areas actually hits a tipping point 

8. The one thing dictators all have in common (mostly) it never ends well.

9. Lmao reminds me of YT videos from “Joe Blogs” — dumbfuck has been predicting the impending collapse of China and Russia for almost ten years.

Comments are closed.