Thread by @Rail_splitter1

It is a giant lie that there is a meaningful opposition to the war in Russia.
800,000 Germans were imprisoned by the Gestapo for resistance during WW2 and thousands were executed.
In Russia, as of March this year, there were 892 court cases. Out of 140 million. 🧵

Since the faux Russian oppositionists love to bring up “those who rot in prison”: yes, over the years I have known people who were clearly murdered by the regime; I’ve known political prisoners. I’ve known people who killed themselves due to harassment and out of despair.

Yes, I also know of people who sabotaged military infrastructure and who are now paying a severe price for that. I know of random cases of bravery and refusal to sell one’s soul for a few roubles.

However, they were and are very few, and they have nothing to do with the thousands of morally ugly individuals abroad today who style themselves “opposition.”

I have periodically over the last 2.5 years immersed myself in their social media chatter, in their writings and podcasts, sometimes interacting but more often just observing. And it is an alternative reality of giant self-pity, entitlement, callousness and imperialism.

They need Putin because his presence provides them with the ability to virtue-signal, which is key to their winning acceptance from gullible Western audiences. Beneath the anti-Putin veneer, there is nothing at all. Nothing you can’t find in every Putinist.

But there is more. These people are atrociously intolerable and intolerant, contemptuous and often hateful of Ukrainians. Their speech is peppered with the bitter sarcasm of bad faith and careful evasions of reality.

They curse Putin not because he unleashed a genocide in Ukraine or because he committed a genocide in Chechnya (which they carefully made sure not to “see” 20 years ago). They curse him because he inconvenienced them. That’s really it.

They are entirely unreachable as potential partners in a common struggle. They are unapologetic and even militant about their disastrous infighting or their hare-brained schemes like “mass voting abroad to show Putin what we can do.”

Or like their “smart voting” scheme in Russia which resulted in a Duma candidate they had endorsed winning over the United Russia candidate, only to reveal himself as a neo-Nazi extremist who has called for the physical annihilation of all Ukrainians.

Alexey Didenko was an “opposition” candidate endorsed by the Navalny squad, ACF/FBK, and he won due to votes from Russians in Paris and London. Of course he’s a neo-Nazi. He’s from LDPR, which only deluded minds can consider “opposition.”

As a rule, the Russian “opposition” considers itself to be brilliant and all its actions to be remarkably successful. When they “fall short,” it is only because of “NAFO bots,” the Russophobia of unintelligent Westerners and, of course, Putin.