Ilya Ponomarev: Who is the person who wants to form a guerrilla force to overthrow Putin? (original)

After the Moscow assassination, Ponomarev’s call to arms is now understood as a starting signal for the inner-Russian partisan struggle. In the appeal, Ponomaryov explains why he did not – like Navalny – go to prison or flee to the West. He consciously recalls the resistance against National Socialism: “The German anti-Nazi underground didn’t flee, they fought. The Poles didn’t flee either, but prepared the Warsaw Uprising. And even if fate would have it otherwise, they fought Anti-fascists like Willy Brandt. And that’s an example for me to follow.” The later German chancellor was active in the resistance from Norway during the Nazi era.

On social media, Ponomarev has many fans among Putin’s critics. In their eyes, the bomb attack in Moscow looks like the first spectacular act of armed resistance. Some already consider him the Che Guevara of the Russian resistance. However, there are doubts in Western intelligence circles whether the “National Republican Army” really already exists, or whether Ponomarev just wants to claim it. It is also possible that he is using Ukraine’s military aid to drive the war into Russia as a pin.

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Ponomaryov is very active in propaganda and runs a Russian-language television news channel called “February Morning” and an Internet news service “Rospartisan”. He reports on anti-government “partisan” activities in Russia, such as attacks on military recruitment centers. Instructions on how to make bombs are sometimes given.

In his youth, Ponomarev was a member of the Communist Party. He comes from a Soviet political dynasty, his mother Larisa Ponomarewa was a member of the Federation Council. His uncle Boris Ponomaryov was secretary for international relations of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, his grandfather Nikolai Ponomaryov was the Soviet ambassador to Poland. The family comes from Novosibirsk, the largest city in Siberia. The young Ilja was already a successful start-up entrepreneur as a teenager, studied physics and economics and quickly made a career for himself at the oil company Yukos. By 30, he was a Russian digital generation star careerist, even becoming the national coordinator for the High-Tech Parks Task Force, a public-private project which should mobilize up to $6 billion to develop a network of small startup incubators. At the age of 32 he became a deputy in the Russian State Duma.

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Ponomaryov was one of those young Russians who believed ten or twenty years ago that Russia could embark on a democratic, liberal, digital future. Early on he advocated a consistent separation of powers, he criticized old power cliques and their corruption, organized protests against another term in office for Vladimir Putin and advanced to become a crosshead and regime critic in parliament. He suddenly became known in March 2014 when he found the courage to be the only member of the Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea, which was universally acclaimed in Russia. The result – 445 yes votes, one no vote – made the world sit up and take notice: “Who is this one vote?” asked the “New York Times” and made the Putin critic from Siberia world famous on the one hand and the target of Putin’s revenge on the other. He became the object of a propaganda campaign, including a huge poster in central Moscow branding him a “traitor to the country”. Ponomarev fled first to the United States, then to Ukraine. Even then, he warned that Putin would not leave it at Crimea, but would eventually launch a war of aggression. “Unfortunately, I was right,” Ponomaryov said eight years later in a CNN interview with Christiane Amanpour.

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Ponomarev is now likely to become the target of Russian assassination attempts. He is already under the protection of Ukrainian security agencies after former Russian MP Denis Voronenkov was shot dead in Kyiv in 2017. Voronenkov was on his way to meet Ponomaryov when he was assassinated*. He too had criticized Russia’s annexation of Crimea as illegal. Ponomaryov is aware of his position and role in the midst of the escalation of violence and describes it thus: “The way to freedom leads only through purification through fire.”

Mark Sleboda suggested that Ilya Ponomarev was associated with the CIA and had made the rounds at neoconservative think tanks.

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