AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Five years ago this week, the leader of the Russian opposition movement, Alexei Navalny, was poisoned with a nerve agent developed by a secret lab in Moscow. Although he survived and recovered in Germany, Navalny was imprisoned upon returning to Russia and died in an Arctic penal colony last February.
Well, now that multiple countries are talking about negotiating an end to Russia's war in Ukraine, where does the Russian opposition movement stand today? That is a question we're going to put to Mikhail Fishman, a host with the independent Russian news outlet TV Rain. He joins us now from Amsterdam, where he is currently based. Welcome.
MIKHAIL FISHMAN: Hi. Yes, thank you for having me.
CHANG: Let me ask you - since Alexei Navalny's death, who has emerged as the leader of the opposition now? Anyone in particular?
FISHMAN: Navalny's death has been more than a loss for Russian opposition. Russia's democratic project is over for many years for now. It was over even before the war started. But there was hope. And this hope that Russia can return to democracy, that Russia can join the club of civilized nations, that everything can be OK and fine - the bearer of this hope was Navalny. He had this moral authority. He reinvented how to do politics of protesting. He created his own base. Hope and expectations were with him.
CHANG: Well, then, if hope and expectations lived and died with Alexei Navalny, how much agreement is there now within the Russian opposition movement on other policy aims, beyond simply standing against Putin's authoritarian government?
FISHMAN: We should talk about resistance rather than of opposition. But now, it doesn't have this guiding light. His camp, his team, has become the target for attacks from within the opposition. It just represents the whole disarray and deflation that the Russian opposition finds itself in now.
CHANG: Yes, I want to talk about that disarray because I noted you are physically in Amsterdam, and yeah, most opposition parties and independent media have had to leave Russia. How much are messages that are critical of the Putin regime even being heard inside Russia now, especially as crackdowns on dissent have intensified after Russia's invasion of Ukraine?
FISHMAN: Well, that's a very good question, and Putin's regime has been quite efficient in censorship and silencing the voices from the outside. The YouTube is basically down in Russia. Now they are on the brink of shutting down WhatsApp and Telegram, and we expect it to happen really soon. It's already started happening but not to the degree that they expected. We see it by our own numbers, by data, for our own broadcasts. In YouTube, we see that we still have quite a significant audience in Russia. I, personally, or my colleagues from TV Rain or other journalistic teams, are targeted on basically a weekly basis by Russian propaganda. And that means that we still matter.
CHANG: Well, now that there is some international momentum to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine, do you think the opposition has more leverage now in calling for things like the freeing of political prisoners as part of some international prisoner exchange deal?
FISHMAN: I would say the only issue that has been brought to the table by Russian resistance, Russian opposition, Russian human-rights watchers - and this is the fate of political prisoners. And the most prominent voice here is the voice of Dmitry Muratov, editor of Novaya Gazeta and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. He appeals for months during every phase of these negotiations. He appeals to all the sides of the conflict, including Washington, to add the release of political prisoners to the agenda of these negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. It's actually a joint effort of human rights watchers in Ukraine, as well as in Russia, to bring political prisoners' fate to the negotiating table.
CHANG: Mikhail Fishman, host with the independent Russian news outlet TV Rain, thank you very much for joining us today.
FISHMAN: Thank you very much. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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