The arrest in absentia in the Russian Federation of Garry Kasparov and me, as well as two other members of the FRF Council – Evgenia Chirikova and Gennadii Gudkov – on charges of creating and supporting a terrorist organization clearly indicates that the Free Russia Forum will soon be moved from the status of an “undesirable organization” to that of a “terrorist organization”.
This has been coming for a long time, we understood it, and this was partly the reason for our decision last year to limit the participation of our activists from Russia in the Forum’s events: the level of insanity of the Russian authorities and the increasing repressiveness of the regime leave no illusions. The Free Russia Forum has never been oriented towards the Kremlin’s agenda, so we continue to work according to our plan: as much as we can, we will support Ukraine in the confrontation with the occupiers; we will support Russian volunteers fighting in the International Legion of the AFU; we will continue to work with Western public opinion and promote the expansion of sanctions against the Putin regime.
In February, a large Free Russia Forum was held in Vilnius, bringing together some 300 activists and politicians, experts and journalists. The situation has continued to change rapidly since then, and on May 14 we are holding another event – an international conference in Warsaw: “Anti-Putin Coalition. Conditions of the Victory and Liquidation of the Regime”. Together with FRF Council members Garry Kasparov, Gennadii Gudkov, Alfred Koch, Evgenia Chirikova, Anastasia Kirilenko, Nikolai Polozov, Evgenii Kiselev, Vladislav Inozemtsev, Ivan Preobrazhenskii, Aleksandr Morozov, Igor Eidman, Mikhail Krutikhin and others, European and American experts and politicians will take part in the conference.
The format will be different from the usual Forum events: the conversation is planned to be important and frank, so the Forum Council decided to hold it in a closed mode, and the results of the event will be announced after the conference at a special briefing, and the documents on the results of the event will be published on the FRF resources.
To be accredited for the post-conference briefing and to schedule interviews with conference participants, please write to the press service of the Free Russia Forum: press@forumfreerussia.org
