 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to USIP. We're very excited to today launch the first in what will be a series of events focused on the impact of the war in Ukraine on Russia, and more particularly Russians who have been forced to leave the country because of Putin's regime and because of Putin's actions or Russia's actions against Ukraine. We're very excited today to have a panel that will discuss with Russian exiles the new wave of exiles from Russia, the new wave of political exiles from Russia, what their situation is like, and what challenges they face, and how we should engage with them going forward to help make this a more peaceable part of the world. In order to introduce that topic and to kick off this panel, I would like to introduce our partner in this endeavor, Gregory Pfeiffer, the Executive Director of the Institute of Current World Affairs. Thank you very much, Mary. And it is so good to see all of you here today and also those who are taking part online for this conversation about what I think is a very important topic and very fitting to have it here at the US Institute of Peace. The Kremlin's genocidal war against Ukraine is not only an existential threat to that country, but also an attack on global liberal democracy. Vladimir Putin's neo-Stalinist regime is bent on dismantling Russian society as we knew it too, destroying institutions and relationships through violence, punishment, and fear. Many hundreds of thousands of Russians have fled since Putin's invasion of Ukraine last year and are joining an emigrate community that had already been growing for years. At the same time and for understandable reasons, the subject of Russian exiles is not much discussed in the West. Some see all of Russian society as guilty of complicity for not removing Putin, but even for the sake of Western national interests that is not altogether a very helpful or useful position, Russian emigrates are natural allies in the effort to defeat the Kremlin in Ukraine and help free Russia from authoritarianism at home. And it is also the largest country in the world by territory, so it is not going to go away. And in any case, dismissing an entire society, whatever your views of its leadership, is analogous to what the Kremlin is trying to do in Ukraine. Being wary, I think, is sensible. There are surely many intelligence agents infiltrating the tide of Russians abroad, but the emigrate community is also full of Russians who have understood and opposed Putin longer than most of the rest of us. And they are the hope of a free and open future Russian society, journalists, opposition politicians and activists, civil society actors, scholars and others, ordinary people. It is imperative that we engage them, like we did during the Cold War and hopefully better this time. So we have a stellar panel to discuss the Russian exile community and its challenges today, kicking off a four-part series on Russian exiles. Here with us in Washington, Natalia Lunde is Vice President of Global Operations at the Free Russia Foundation, which has been doing incredible work for years supporting exiles and helping them forge a future in free societies, in addition to opposing democracy, rather opposing autocracy at home, and now also the war against Ukraine. Margarita Zavadskaya, who is joining us from Finland, is studying the emigrate community. She is a senior research fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, and she's currently focused on the political impact of Russian emigration in receiving countries with the Outrush Research Project. And she is editor of a forthcoming book, Politics of the Pandemic, Blame Game and Governance in Russia and Central Eastern Europe. Also joining us online from London, Andrei Saldatov is an investigative journalist who has done much to identify and explain the nature of Putin's security system. He is co-founder of the Agentura-Ru website, together with his colleague Ilina Bragan. They also recently co-wrote a terrific book about Soviet exiles in the 20th century. It's called The Compatriots, the Brutal and Chaotic History of Russia's Exiles, Emigrates, and Agents Abroad. And finally, I can think of no better person to moderate this discussion than Jeff Gedman, here also with us in Washington. He is the former and now again acting president of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty, which is broadcasting to Russian audiences and many others. Jeff is also co-founder and editor of Our Partner American Purpose, which is leading important conversations about core liberal democratic values and interests. And Jeff is also a trustee of the Institute of Current World Affairs. I am very much looking forward to this important conversation about the challenges facing new Russian exiles, particularly in the media and civil society, as they look to establish themselves abroad and continue their work, as well as what their future might hold and how we can help. The panel will talk for roughly 40 minutes, followed by a Q&A with the audience. And I ask that when asking questions, please introduce yourself, identify yourselves, and please stick to one question. Finally, before handing over to Jeff, I want to thank the U.S. Institute of Peace for so generously hosting us here. And also American Purpose for co-sponsoring the discussion, and especially Sid Lipset and others who did such amazing talk, such amazing work organizing this talk. Thank you, and handing over to Jeff. Great. Thank you very much for that scene setting and generous introduction. We're going to dive right in. I will say one does have the feeling, I don't know what to say, the world is changing very rapidly and now suddenly Russia too. And I said to someone the other day, you know, it's very different than from two years ago when this person said, well, it's very different from two months ago, maybe even from two weeks ago, things were moving so, so quickly. So I wanted to suggest if first we can get a kind of complete data set to better understand exactly what we're talking about. And Marguerita, if I could do so, I'd like to call on you first and ask you just factually if we're talking about Russian M-graves and the new waves, could you tell us a little bit as a researcher, could you tell us a little bit about who's coming and where and numbers is best we know? Well, first of all, I'm very flattered and pleased to be here, although online, but I hope it's, that's the best way actually to, you know, telecom but from Finland to the United States. Well, when it comes to the numbers and, well, kind of factual knowledge we have on the recent Russian migrants. Since February 24 last year, approximately 800,000 Russians have made the difficult decision to leave their homeland in response to the full scale invasion of Ukraine. Kazakhstan, Georgia, Turkey and Armenia have hosted the largest proportion of these migrants, like 10,000s of migrants. But these numbers are not precise due to several glitches in the state statistics. So these numbers originate from the host societies. And the principles according to which the statistic is being collected, they vary quite dramatically across different countries. But these are the best numbers we have at the moment. It's also interesting to note that the European Union and Israel together, they have each admitted roughly the same number of Russian nationals, around 40,000 Russian nationals. Approximately the same number attempted to apply for political assignments in the United States, also about like slightly less than 40,000 people according to the most recent statistics. At the same time, a significant number of activists and journalists have found their way to Dbilisi, the capital of Georgia, Briga, which is in Latvia and Berlin, Germany. These residues have emerged as the primary intellectual hubs for Russian anti-war and pro-democratic groups, where different initiatives, ideas are taking root and are growing at the moment. So these are the baseline numbers we can refer to. So Margaret, thank you very much. We're going to come back to you pretty quickly here. The time to get you in early, it may sound mundane, but it's real life, large flows of people. There are immense organizational, logistical, infrastructural challenges when people land in Georgia or Armenia. Could you paint a little bit of a picture for us about what people are up against and in the respective host countries, how they manage these things? Absolutely. That's a great question. So Russian exiles face three broad groups of challenges. As I see it, first is actually security. So as Margarita mentioned, a lot of them go to countries that do not require visas or do not require travel, international travel documents for Russian citizens. And that would be in Central Asia. That would be in Georgia, Armenia. And what we are seeing is a worrisome trend where some of the state authorities are complying with the Russian government request for extradition of those people back to Russia. As we speak today, there's a number of them facing extradition proceedings in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. So they are also targeted by Russian intelligence services, so they are not feeling safe. And of course, in many host countries for these exiles, they're not quite welcome. They become sort of the subject of societal tension and this very much deserved outpour of emotion related to the tragedy of Ukraine. So security is one of them. Another one is their ability to reinstate their work. Most of those Russians left Russia, they sort of voted with their feet for political reasons. And they, from our surveys, from the studies that we conduct, we learned that most of them want to continue staying in the fight. They want to continue working in support of democracy activities inside Russia to end the war. And they are doing that either as volunteers or even full-time. So their ability to do this is really hampered by the fact that they don't have maybe visas, they don't have a path to legalization, the cards are blocked. And not to mention the fact that they are now uprooted, their connection with their audiences has been disrupted. And finally, kind of the path forward upon the immediate, you know, as they regroup, in a lot of places there's no path for them to stay and to continue their work. So there's no EU-wide policy on what to do with exiles. There's no transatlantic decision on what to do with those Russians. And it is important for the West to recognize these exiles for what they are, which is the West, the democracy's biggest asset as they counter Putin's efforts to attack democracy worldwide. Thank you, Natalia. Let's get you and Andrei, you've written a book about Russian immigrants during the Cold War. Let me suggest a premise to you and you will amend it or correct it and then my question. Inside Russia, it seems to me that I'm painting with a very broad brush. During the Cold War, there was a premise not wrong across the West that there was a pretty decent constituency sympathetic to Western values and opposed to Soviet communism, certainly by the 1980s in my view, but you can speak to that. And then similarly with emigres, broad brush. Today, it seems to me inside Russia things have become a bit more complicated, actually. And I'm asking you with Russian emigres, since the beginning of the Ukraine War, is it all complicated? Is this a monolith? Are these people fleeing conscription? Are they fleeing because they oppose Putin? Are they fleeing because they oppose the Ukraine War? What broadly, what makes up this group and how do you describe the group? Thank you, Jeff, for a terrific question. First of all, I think that as a comparison with the Cold War time, it's not really working here because now we know much more about the people being in Russia than it was like 40, 50 years ago. Back then, foreign correspondents couldn't really work in Moscow, couldn't live in Moscow. They couldn't visit Russian Soviet regions or republics or if they visited them, it was supervised by the KGB and as a result, a picture the West got about the mood in the Soviet Union was quite far from reality. The other thing is that what is important for the mood in the society is the way they see the future. And the Russian dissident, Soviet dissident movement started after Stalin died and that was extremely important. People believed that coming back to Stalin's repressions were simply not possible. And for them, for sure, from Brezhnev, they're not great guys, but at least it was absolutely incomparable with Stalin. What we have now, what kind of tragedy we have now is absolutely different. People expect that the situation will get worse. They expect Stalin's size repressions. They see that the government and the Kremlin is constantly referring to Stalin, either talking about Ukraine or about the situation in the country. We have monuments to Stalin erected in Russia once again and it sends a very strong message to people in the country. They understand that, well, now it's about to protest. It might be even more difficult and more challenging than, say, in the 1970s. Which is not entirely true, but this is the perception. And of course you absolutely right, the situation with emigration is a recent wave of emigration is much more complicated. Yes, we have lots of Russian journalists including me and Russian activists and politicians who fled the country because it was absolutely impossible to keep doing our job, staying in the country. And because we wanted to keep fighting and that is the reason why we left. There are, of course, intellectuals, professors and people in academia who left the country because they understand that in these days Russia is impossible to do any meaningful research because all ties with Western institutions are simply severed and not encouraged by the FSB and you can end up in prison if you are conducting research with colleagues from Western institutes and research centres. And finally you have Russian men who decided to flee the country when the mobilisation started. And to say that these people, they are anti-criminal or they are against the war. It would be a big exaggeration. Many of them are opportunists. They just wanted to flee because they didn't want to be sent to the battlefield and being massacred. And there is a senseless war. They understood there are chances to survive. And when they ended up abroad, unfortunately, but understandably, they are trying to keep low profile. They do not want to engage in any political activities. That is why we have two sets of questions with Russian immigration. One is ethical and it is absolutely understandable why so many people, especially in Ukraine, are so angry when they see. These Russians who are trying to pretend that nothing is going on in their country. They didn't flee, they just relocated. And well, it's absolutely understandable. But there is also a set of practical questions. And I think we need to remember about that. That these people, many of them, Russian men, they are quite educated. Many of them are IT specialists. And right now, the Kremlin needs these people in the country. Because they have problems with technologies, they have problems with weapons, they have problems with ammunition, with new kinds of weaponry, like drones, for instance. And they need these people and they are trying to get these people back. So we have a very practical question here. Where we want to have these people? In Russia, contributing to the Russian war effort, helping the Russian military industrial complex. Writing, as we speak, software for Russian drones. Or we want to have them outside of the Russian borders. Even if they are political, not really anti-Kremlin, have no vision about Russian future and do not want to participate in any kind of political activity. And my sense is that we need to think in practical terms, because we have the war which is going on. And we need to do our best to stop this war and to have Russia defeated in this war. So, Andrei, thank you. I'm going to go back to Natalia and then Marguerite to bear with me. I'm coming back to you very soon too. Natalia, do we know anything about generational differences of those who have been flowing into Europe? Some to the United States of Georgia, we heard about Kazakhstan, we heard about Armenia, we heard about in terms of numbers, but also in terms of, do we have any evidence of attitudes toward the future of Russia? What they see or expect from host countries in transition? What do we know about generations? So again, as Marguerite mentioned, the statistics are quite difficult. According to our informal estimates, the majority of these Russians are quite young, so we estimate 60 to 75 percent are under the age of 35 with about another 20, 25 percent under the age of 50. So under 10 percent is over the age of 50. Of course, the generational differences, I mean, they are, you know, they are living Russia for the same reason. Generational differences would be probably in their ability to adapt. The newer generations, you know, they have had experience with remote work, perhaps working in dispersed teams. They are more savvy with the various platforms that allow them to find employment. And the older generation is not quite flexible or resilient perhaps. Another issue is maybe the thematic focus. So as I mentioned, the Russian exiles that we work with, they are eager to contribute in any way they can to end the war in Ukraine and to support democratic development inside Russia. And so younger exiles, their issues are more expensive. So they work on LGBTQ plus issues, on environmental issues. They are more interested in building horizontal, open structures forming coalitions. But overall, I would say they're pretty similar. Thank you. Margarita, I'd like to go back to you. And if I may ask about the political makeup and the orientation. I'm playing off something Natalia said that they want many most want to end the war. What do we know, again, in terms of data or polling? Of course, impressions of those who have moved to broad and who want to see the war ended, who want to see the Putin regime defeated, but feel conflicted about Russia losing and what Russian defeat means for developments internally inside the Federation. This is an excellent question. I will rely on the evidence we got from more than 400 interviews. We conducted in six countries, Serbia, Turkey, Armenia, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. And plus I will also rely on our survey. So we conduct regular panel survey. Panel means that we interview the same people over and over again. So we can actually keep track on their movement. So this survey is not representative because we have no idea what the true parameters of the general population look like. So I have to be brutally honest with you. But on the other hand, keeping track on these changes gives us like unique information. So what how political attitudes and general attitudes are changing given the circumstances. As we mentioned at the beginning of this conversation, things change very rapidly in Russia, inside Russia and also within the Russian-speaking communities of the new exiles. Let me just echo what Natalia just said. The median age of new migrants is 30 years old. So this is the age when people are at the peak where they're kind of climbing to the... This is the best time for building up someone's career, right? And indeed, so in terms of political values, we observe dramatic differences in people's orientation. So one of the most divisive issues is among these generational differences, pertains to gender politics, feminism and attitudes towards LGBTQI plus issues. And in addition to that, when it comes to the future of the Russian Federation after the defeat or not, so well, if we're talking about the younger generation, I would say like younger than 35, 30 years old. Well, the share of people who stick to the unconditional support for Ukraine, even donating to the Ukrainian army is significantly higher. Because these people do not share positive picture of the USSR. They were born later or they were too young to remember Soviet Union. And they actually have zero nostalgia for whatever was happening back in the 70s or 60s. On the other hand, if we rely on other surveys that our European Union colleagues were conducting, so we see actually very little differences in terms of attitudes towards the war between the new Russian speakers and the youth in Europe. So these people actually share way more in common rather than people with Russian passports. So again, generational differences play a more dramatic role rather than people's nationality. And I think this is a quite important finding. So it's utterly wrong to put people into the same basket just because they have the same red passport. So this is not as unifying as one may think. Margarita, thank you. I'm going to ask you a follow-up question. As you're tracking flows and places and you mentioned at the top, Kazakhstan and Armenia and Georgia and Turkey, have they're formed or are they're forming in my language maybe imprecise civil society hubs where people are gathering apart from other places because of the hospitality of the environment or because of funding or because of partnership with other NGOs or trillions to organizations? Are there hubs like this or is it more diffuse still at this stage? This is an excellent question. So the political, the opportunity structure, the political landscape of receiving society plays a dramatic role whether the Russo-formed community would build these bottom-up hubs as you described them. So I use the same term. And in this sense, Kazakhstan differs drastically from Georgia, for instance. In Georgia, despite the pretty hostile attitude towards Russians, so if any of you actually had a chance to visit Tbilisi, so there are like the slogans, Russians go home. That's the mildest thing you can actually read about Russians in the Georgian capital. But on the other hand, so it's one of the most vibrant community of Russian speakers at the moment who are pretty radical by the Russian standards in terms of political activities, in terms of their stance and solidarity with Ukraine. So again, so the kind of hostile attitude towards Russian does not prevent these people from mobilizing. This is a very interesting observation. It's less of true, it's not the case in Armenia, not that much compared to Tbilisi. And when it comes to Kazakhstan, well, there is a lot of self-selection going on. Those people who tend to be, you know, more apolitical and kind of, you know, they just want to live and stay safe without engaging too much with any political activities and running any risk. So they are more likely to end up in Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. So and they do not form any hubs. According to our interviews, the most common description or explanation for such for this decision is that, well, it's not allowed here. We're migrants. We have no rights. So we're not entitled to do anything in this country. And this phrase keeps repeating over and over again from one interview to another. Thank you, Margarita. I'm going to ask Andrei Natalia the same question. Whether you are a civil society leader or an NGO advocate across the West, I'll call it the West for the United States, or a newcomer from Russia this last one or two years in any of these countries. How does one now reach Russians inside Russia as we see a space closing and closing and closing? Andrei? It is closing. You are absolutely right. But we still have technology and thanks God YouTube is still available in Russia. Circumversion tools are getting more and more and more popular. So even the social media which are blocked, like Facebook, for instance, are still available and people use Facebook extensively. Of course, there is also Telegram, which is the most popular social media in the country, used both by programming bloggers but also by opposition and independent media, most of them now in exile. And we see statistics that Russian media in exile, they enjoy audience of millions and millions of people. Medusa has millions of people, TV doors, the only Russian independent TV channel has millions of views in Russia, which means that there is a huge demand for this kind of information. I think it's quite ironic that the most popular Russian speaking media is Medusa, which is the Russian media in exile. It means that educated people in big cities and small cities, they need this information and they think as a way to find this information is to go to the Russian media in exile. Thank you. Natalia, we just heard YouTube. If that's no longer available, is that a big deal or a manageable deal? That would be a huge deal and I think we should be all preparing for this eventuality right now, developing technological tools, working with private companies with big tech to rescind the denial of services that have been imposed inside Russia, including content promotion and monetization. I think we're shooting ourselves in the food. Here we are spending money trying to break through to the Russian people and yet, as Andrey said, there's this Russian media in exile. And by the way, we can say now that most of the Russian independent media in the past year and a half has been either forced into exile or shut down inside Russia. And they have built this rapport with Russian audiences for decades, years and decades. They have highly nuanced understanding of Russian audiences. So Free Russia Foundation, my organization, we run several such efforts throughout the exile hubs, as you call them, we call them resource centers, and we are not giving up on any Russian audiences. Anyone in Russia now trying to access information about the war different from that advanced by the Kremlin is doing that with real risk for their freedom and for their life. They are people who are going to jail for repulse of social media. So they are there searching for information, and the most effective purveyors of such information is the Russian media in exile, and we need to be empowering them. The efforts that I just mentioned that Free Russia Foundation is running is done through social media of contact here, for example, or telegram. And so, you know, you reach out to, again, these exiled Russian media, they may have a better appreciation of regional agenda or regional sensibilities of how various ethnicities perceive information. So they are able to communicate with audiences in a way that does not alienate and that if it doesn't bring about a monumental change of mobilization, it shifts opinion. Thank you. I mean, I'll ask one more, and then we're going to open up to the audience online and in person here in Washington, D.C., to all of you, but we'll start with you and Natalia. Talk to us a moment about U.S. policy and EU policy. Those things that we're not doing that we should undertake, is there anything that does harm that we should think about carefully? If we're supporting Russian exiles and if we're supporting Russian civil society back at home? Well, first of all, it is important to not think of this as a PT case or charity case. Russian exiles are a strategic asset to the West in its effort to counter Putin, both in the Western support for Ukraine in this war, to end this war, to support Ukrainian victory and also wider efforts of global influence and to reshape the global order. So as such, it is really important for officials in Washington, in Brussels, the transatlantic community to openly declare that it is a partner, that Russian civil society, both in exile and in country, is a strategic partner. That declaration by itself may actually immediately relieve a lot of the threats and tensions faced by Russian exiles in the host countries. It could be Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan or let's say Estonia. So that's number one. Second, once we verbalize that, we have to make logical steps toward that end. This is a strategic asset. It's perishing. You have these people who ran with one suitcase and a couple of books to the forest. Their business, their visa mastercard have been canceled by Western sanctions. That's back to your question of what has been harmful. A lot of the denial of service sanctions have actually been impacting the wrong Russians. So when you deny Russians entry into the EU or a specific country, you're not prohibiting Putin's oligarchs from traveling there because most of them have Dublin, triple-citizenships and passports. When you are canceling somebody's visa or mastercard or PayPal, you're not hurting those people. They have bank accounts. When you're denying monetization of content on social media or promotion, opportunity to promote your content, you're not hurting the Kremlin's propaganda. You're hurting those people who are on your side. So that has been extremely counterproductive. After we say this is a strategic asset, we stop hurting them by actually enforcing the carve-outs for human rights activists and civil society. That is pro-democracy and anti-war on these matters. Another way we can help them is by deciding and agreeing to create some sort of a mechanism to legalization of these people so that they are not worried that they have to move to a second or third country as this is happening right now. For example, with people looking to move from Armenia, Georgia or Estonia to another country where they're not worried about getting admitted back across the border, where they're not worried of being having their, like in Serbia, having their residency permits revoked or being extradited worse. So we need to think through some sort of mechanism for them to stay because the faster they are allowed to do so is the faster they get back to work. And this is what we want them to do. Thank you, Natalia. Under we're going to turn to you the same question, things that we ought to be undertaking. Is there anything that does more harm than good? Well, I completely agree with Natalia with everything she said, but there's also some really practical questions. I'm a journalist and I think that of course everybody in exile, I mean, in Russian journalism community, are thinking how to stay relevant to the Russian audience. And one big question, it's another one in the room, is that to stay relevant we need to be able to report the most important story of this time. And this is the wall. And there is a problem that we as Russian journalists, we're Russian passports, we cannot travel to Ukraine to cover this wall, which I think is very unfortunate. I completely understand the emotions, and of course the emotions around high in Ukraine, but we need to understand that the only voice the Russians are trusting right now is the Russian voice of Russian media and Russian media in exile. If we ever would want to hear what is going on in Ukraine, but all these atrocities committed by the Russian army, they would need to hear it from the Russian voices. So we need to be able to go to Ukraine to report this wall and to tell the story. It is a very practical thing and it could be fixed quite quickly, I think. So it's not only about money, it's not only about support. It's about things like journalism. If we can't do that, I think we can make a difference. Thank you to you, Marguita, as you wish, about U.S. and EU policy. But say a word about Russian audiences and interests right now. And so Andrew's point is well taken. Russian voices authentically, credibly reporting on the war in Russian language. But is it also the case that some Russians opposed to the war get tired of hearing about the war? Well, there is a big share of people who are tired. Yes, they confess that while they're psychotherapists, or I mean I'm talking about those privileged who actually have access to such services, it's not the majority. So yes, they claim that they are kind of tired of their agenda. But in terms of numbers, it's hard to tell because well, if I turn back to my numbers from our survey, so again the degree of politicization remains the same. Even if they claim that they're tired, it doesn't really leave any imprint on the donations, on the degree, on the involvement in volunteering activities and so whatsoever. So they keep on going and the number of donations to Ukrainians, for instance, it even increased over time. So we do not, in terms of actions, we do not observe this fatigue. Although people, of course, they say they complain that they're tired, it's exhausting. But when it comes to their actions, so we see quite the opposite. And I think it's quite admirable. Thank you. I trust you all agree, what a splendid panel. This is just outstanding expertise and sharp analysis and insight. Now the floor is open. There's a colleague here from the US Institute of Peace who, when there's a question online, will read it so that we all hear it. And then anybody here live in the room who wants to begin, raise your hand, Greg Pfeiffer. And I will not say identify yourself, Greg, but if you came late, Greg is Executive Director of the Institute of Current World Affairs and he is the leader and partner in this program in Syria. Greg, please. Thank you, Jeff, and thank you to all the panelists. I can only second Jeff's high praise. I've been following this issue quite closely and I'm learning a lot here. With apologies, I have a sort of two-part question. One for Natalia and Margarita. Can you give some concrete examples of society groups, sort of their names and just give us a sense of what they're actually doing on the ground, furthering the issues that you mentioned, and what are you doing specifically to help them? And sort of a larger question touching on what Andre mentioned as well about the IT experts, professionals, people like that who are sort of looking for a future in the West, perhaps. What can Western countries like the U.S. and our allies, but also host countries who are also our allies, what can they be doing to try to show these people that there's a future here rather than having to go back to Russia? What specifically more can be done? Thank you. Thank you for the great question. So Free Russia Foundation has established resource hubs throughout Europe. Our first one was in Tbilisi, Georgia. Then we had Berlin, Tallinn, Montenegro, Vilnius. We're opening a few more, hopefully very soon. And each center serves about 2,000 activists per year. So we're talking about 10,000 activists that they are working almost full-time on this project's campaigns dealing with Russians inside Russia or supporting Ukraine. The number 10,000 is only limited by our capacity. The actual need is hundreds of times more. So there's definite issue with resource allocation. We can get a lot more involved. What are the types of the projects? Number one is supporting Ukrainian refugees, providing them with shelter, food, with logistical support. We are organizing campaigns to collect evidence of the war crimes in support of what we hope for inevitable justice process, war crime tribunal for the crimes committed in Ukraine by Putin's regime. We are finding Ukrainian POWs and Ukrainian civilians, children, illegally deported to Russia. And a lot of the times kept in secret. We're finding them and helping start the process of providing legal support and hopefully exchanges and returning them back to Ukraine. We are supporting people inside Russia who don't want to go and join this war and anti-mobilization campaigns. We're supporting counter-disinformation campaigns talking to the Russian people. And again there was the question of are they tired of hearing this anti-war message. It doesn't have to be about necessarily the war directly. It can be this is what this war translates for your economic well-being, for your prospects, for your quality of life and for the Russian society for decades and decades to come. That is not lost and really hard to conceal, which is why I think Putin is going so aggressively after this type of information and the sources. Andrei and I actually a few days ago met in New York and we heard Galina Timchenko of Medusa discuss this onslaught on the information sources in Russia. And she used the number 800, correct me if I'm wrong, Andrei, but I think she used the number of 855,000 websites blocked in Russia in the past six months along. Now if there was real fatigue within the Russian audiences about the war information, they wouldn't have to work so hard. That's a lot of hundreds of thousands. So your question was what we are doing. We are trying to catch the Russian civil society to stabilize them. A lot of them are experienced traumatic psychological crisis, distress, PTSD, depression. We are trying to channel that. We're trying to make sure they feel better, but also channel that to change the situation, to conduct campaigns inside Russia. And definitely we see that Ukrainian victory in this war is the number one condition for political change inside Russia. And yet it doesn't matter whether the war ends this month or stretches out for longer. We still will have, as you mentioned in the beginning, we still have this 142 million Russians we'll have to deal with. You know, the loss of the imperial ambition, the resentment, and nuclear weapons. And we have to prepare for that phase too. Thank you, Natalia. I think you want to direct that to Marguerite as well. Is that right, Greg? Marguerite, if you'd like to get in on that, you're welcome to. First of all, I'm very grateful to Natalia for covering at least 60%, if not 80% of what I was about to say. Thank you so much. So I would love to add on top the feminist anti-war resistance. So this is a quite prominent and new kind of social movement. So that's actually never existed before. And these people are quite brilliant in advocating and actually articulating the ideas. This is a kind of a new type of public politics in Russian language. And what they're doing is quite brilliant, I believe. And also there is a kind of a rise of alternative professional organizations. So among journalists, among political scientists where I belong to. So they're like anti-war democratic associations of different professions. I think this is quite interesting development even when it comes to IT professions. So which is believed to be pretty much a political detached from public activities. So these kind of developments, the new norm is on the rise. And it's emerging. And I would also kind of pay attention to those developments. And of course there are some even joint initiatives with Ukrainian Volunteering Association. Although they're quite rarely, I would say, promoted publicly due to several reasons. Because Ukrainians also actually are not particularly keen on saying that they're Russians working along with us. But as long as they actually keep it low profile and they just cooperate on the ground. So quite often it turns out to be quite productive and efficient collaborations. So these things exist. Margaret, thank you. This gentleman here, you have a question? Yeah, we'll get all of you and let's start right there in the front row. Thank you. My name is Yuri Terekhov. I'm a political activist also. And a researcher now with the Kennan Institute. I just wanted to indicate this problem of, I would say, Thank you for mentioning the feminist anti-war resistance movement. I was to indicate I'm doing research on the grassroots, initiatives, grassroots activism, new movements that appeared after the full scale invasion of Ukraine. And I want to, out of interviews with them, I want to indicate a problem they're complaining about is the, I would say, inequality or in accessing media and financial support between the old Russian opposition figures and organizations and those new grassroots activists and movements. And me and also media, which are actually not restricted to this, I would say, liberal, urban bubble audience of the Russian opposition but try to reach to new audiences, reflect on new areas like feminism and decolonization and actually do most of volunteer work, including helping Ukrainians like organizations like the World for Ukraine, Russians for Ukraine, for Ukraine in Poland, for example. And they often do much more work than Navalny team or even Kolorkovsky team, with all due respect. I know there are some efforts done by the Frelashia Foundation. I know, but still those donor organizations, they often don't trust those new, not established smaller activists' organizations and they also cannot afford personhood, do fundraising for them. So how can we empower those grassroots initiatives in such and such a situation in the first place? Thank you. Thank you, Yuri. Andrei, would you like to take that? Well, it's probably not the question to me, but I would love to address the question asked by Greg about the IT specialist and what to do with these people because it is a very complicated question. It's not only about visas and visas is a problem because people who want to leave the country, they do not want to, excuse me, to apply for D-type European visa because they immediately identify them as troublemakers and they do not want to do that while they're still in Russia. But the biggest question is drops. And I had lots of discussions with European officials and European companies and many of them started the same problem. They said, look, we do not want to hire Russian IT specialists because we have a security problem. How can we let them in our systems if they still have relatives in Russia? We do not know about their relatives. They are not really political. We cannot watch them. It's a big problem. So it's better not to hire any Russian IT specialist at all. And these kinds of perception affects not only people who, say, are trying to make a way to Europe but also people who live or settled in Central Asia because we cannot just cannot work remotely for European companies. And it is a big problem. Of course, the concerns are absolutely legit. But I think in this case it is a problem of European security services. It's not a problem of immigration. And I strongly suspect that the real problem here is that European security services have problems of sharing intelligence and information about Russian immigration. They do not know how to check this information. And we know already of several astonishing examples of the lack of this kind of cooperation. Just this month there was a huge scandal in Denmark. And it was discovered by a journalist that a new military attache of the Russian embassy had been asked to leave the Netherlands just a year ago. And it betrays an astonishing lack of sharing of information between European security services. You just cannot do that. And thinking and understanding that they have this problem, they just decided to lay all the blame on the entire community of Russian IT specialists, which is not entirely fair. Thank you. Let's keep going. And you have one online? Yes. Okay. This person has asked specifically, what is Andrei Soldatov's opinion of U.S. efforts to reach out to Russian youth within Russia and in exile? Andrei, did you get that? Yes. Well, I have mixed feelings. I had several conversations with U.S. officials and some of them told me quite openly that they believe that there is no real strategy towards Russian emigration this time in comparison with the Cold War when there was a strategy and the only country which actually had some sort of strategy was the United States. And this time with U.S. officials told me there is no need for the strategy because there is no ideological battle, which I find a bit strange. We can't deny Putin of having any kind of ideology and all this side corruption and all these things, but I strongly suspect that unfortunately there is some sort of ideology behind many people who feel on the same page with Putin and we are talking not only about Russian spot about people in some other countries. It is a big problem. We need to address it. We need to understand that we have some new ideological battle here. Even if these guys, they lack Marx and Dengels and other founders of the ideology, still it is happening. And I think we need to admit that and it would be great if the United States would admit that and they would understand that this war is going to last for years and this problem is not going away and for this the United States needs a strategy. Thank you. Can we go to the front row on the aisle please? Thank you so much again for this event. My name is Noma Zarubin. I am a student in Harvard Extension School International Studies Program. My question is about Kazakhstan and Central Asia in general, probably maybe two A.O. Andrey Soldatov and others. So what is the best way to reduce the influence of Russian propaganda organizations which are connected to Russian intelligence services such as Russia Trudinstvo, for example? In other words, how civil society of Kazakhstan and Russians who live over there in Astana and other cities can protect themselves from aggressive propaganda on ideological level right now. Thank you. Thank you. Who would like to take that? Good question. Hard question. I can take that. Specific question. If no volunteers, I'll volunteer. So we notice that the Russian exiles themselves. Are the ones most interested in keeping their community and the host community safe. So they are, you know, they still have links inside Russia. A lot of them have even, you know, connections inside the Russian intelligence. They're able to vet, they're able to conduct the background checks on the new people coming in, you know, pretending to be exiles but really being Putin's agents. So it is, you know, it is, it would be smart to use them in that sense. And in communities like Germany, for example, the new influx of Russian political activists, they can serve as an antidote to the influence, the Kremlin's influence with the older generation of Russian emigrants. They kind of can help mitigate the risk posed by the Russian influence operations there. Thank you. I'm going to suggest one online and then one here live in the group. Do I have one online? Sure. One second, it ran away from me. Is there a consensus among exiles about what a post-Putin Russia looks like and what the biggest challenges will be? Natalia will stay with you for that one for a moment. We'll get the others in, but go ahead. I love this question, especially because right now we're working on exactly that project, Russia's transition toward democracy post-Putin. We don't know when this will happen, but the men's 70, and as we saw with Prigoshin's riot that, you know, put us facing a possible change of regime and as things are changing very quickly inside Russia with Kadyrov supposedly being in coma, things can change very quickly and we need to start planning now and involving as broad of Russian civil society as possible for safety reasons, probably mostly outside of Russia, but there are ways to socialize these concepts. So we're building such consensus that it is possible. And going back to Mr. Terehov's question, actually I feel like this is what Free Russia Foundation does really great. We work with all anti-Putin, all pro-democracy and anti-war Russians and hoping that this is something, the new factor that will put us on a different level to previous diaspora organizations. Thank you. I'm going to ask Andrei and Margarita to hold their fire for a moment so we get more questions in. And we'll come to you, you've been patient, but let's go to this side of the room, get a couple here if you can bring the microphone. Second row here next to the aisle. Thank you very much. Daniela Galperos, Voice of America. Hi, Jeff. Good to see you, my great. My question to Andrei, Privat Andrei. Privat. You're known very well as a specialist in security services and despite all the turn and very positive turn on the conversation here there is still some danger of infiltrating really pro-Putin, really professional people to the West. And do you know anything about the facts of that? I mean from special services, from people who professionally connected with Kremlin and so on. Do you think what kind of cooperation could be between Western security services, Western governments to prevent that and to separate? Because it's very easy when you catch this case, when you like exemplify this and you say immediately, oh, this is true for all Russians. So how to distinct and how to protect so-called good Russians from that Russians. Thank you. Well, I recently I knew a good answer to this question. Unfortunately, yes, we already have several examples of infiltrations and it started last year. We have several activists who actually moved to Georgia to some of the countries and they went to journalists and they told them that they were approached by the FSB and they were either convinced to leave the country or the FSB was in the know that they were about to leave the country and they recruited them. And of course we know only of the cases where you have activists coming forward about this information. We do not have the full picture here. We all understand that we can get more cases, more problems here because the Russian security and intelligence agencies, they are getting more and more innovative, especially now when we have lost so many Russians because the traditional cover embassies lost so many people in some countries in Europe we have only two diplomats and of course it's not enough to conduct any kind of activities including espionage. The problem here, I think it's not only penetration and infiltration, it's something much more ominous. Unfortunately, we have all three Russian intelligence agencies involved in dealing and working with Russian immigration. So we have not only SVR, Russian Foreign Intelligence Agency and the FSB, Russian mostly domestic agency, being active abroad but also military intelligence. These people are by definition always as they are in a time of war which means they disregard completely the cost of their operations and now it is a time of war. So we can expect more attempts of assassination. We already have several cases where people, while they are poisoned or attacked, and while we have the case of Natasha, I don't know, the head of the three Russian Foundation and thanks God she is well alive but she was attacked and she is not the only one who was attacked recently. I think we can expect more of these things happening unfortunately. Do we have one recipe how to counter that? Unfortunately, technology now presents at the same time some benefits and challenges. On the one hand, I would say that the Russian immigrant community is much more connected than say the Russian Soviet immigrant community back in the 70s or 80s because of the internet. Now it will take me maybe one connection to reach out to anyone in Russian immigrant community because of Facebook and because of the way we operate. But at the same time it makes things very transparent. We have several challenges for instance how to have our meetings. It is a big problem for journalists how we can have our meetings and how we can make sure that these meetings are not compromised and how to have meetings of political activists. A particular challenge is that some people are still able to travel between Russia and the West and we need to do our utmost to protect these people and again it presents a big challenge. So there is no easy answer to this question unfortunately. Andre, thank you. So time is racing you all and I am mindful of your time. Let's take this gentleman in the back in the last row then we'll take one online then we'll take this gentleman over here in the middle and then we'll see where we are but we're close. Yes, thank you. My name is Van Famine. I am with SIPA. My question is about the issue of Russian immigrants and exiles still being dependent on Russian embassies and we know that it is very possible that they will be at some moment or some of them will deny the renewal of their passports in the EU countries in some of them there are some mechanisms used but in Georgia and Kazakhstan we have to be prepared for this scenario and I don't see any solutions. Do you have any ideas how we can act? Thank you. Marguerite to that may be a nice one for you. Yes, thank you so much for bringing this up. So as we know and Andre also wrote and spoke a lot about that issue so whatever happens with Belarusias is very likely to happen with Russians and what's going on with Belarusian passports so this kind of... not trick but this kind of problem challenge is going to happen sooner or later so I think actually Georgians are quite well equipped with this great passports or this passport of foreigners so actually Georgia is not that problematic as you described so I'm not saying that it's easy but they do have a procedure it's a long procedure, it's utterly inconvenient for Russians but at least they have something when it comes to European Union the ebbs and flows of European bureaucracy are so complicated that even the implementation of the existing procedure is quite problematic so I talked to Belarusian specialists a while ago and they also complained that yes, there are some leeways but we have no idea how it's going to be implemented so maybe it's a bigger issue for the European Union rather than for Georgia or countries like that so a single country can handle these cases easier more easily than the European Union but this is a real challenge and I hope that the international expert community can come up with a decent solution, a quick solution Thank you, should we take one online? Sure, can any of the panelists comment on whether there are formal or civil society contacts between Russian, EGZOP community and Ukrainians or the Ukrainian government? Vitalian? Yes, we've been so when my organization specifically was founded actually this was eight years ago our first project was actually on supporting Ukrainian political prisoners, victims of the first Russian invasion and so our second office after our Washington D.C. office was open in key of Ukraine and we had very robust extensive programs throughout Ukraine working with Ukrainian civil society as expected a lot of these connections and not just for us but for everyone took a huge hit after the war started and it was important for Ukrainian society for mobilization purposes to mobilize society and really separating us versus them but we see going forward it is critical again to work with Ukrainian civil society together because so many of our skills and understanding is complementary in what we're trying to do we're trying to do the same thing we're trying to bring victory to Ukraine we're trying to make sure that once the war in Ukraine ends the peace in Europe is sustainable and that's not possible without democracy in Russia so we see Ukrainian people and actually everyone globally, internationally as our allies Thank you Natalia I'm going to turn to you, Andrei you said earlier in the conversation today that one would need reporting on the war from inside Ukraine by Russians in Russian language but as the question implied, it's not so easy and relations between Russians and Ukrainians on any level are not so easy could you speak to that and maybe tell us what you experienced in this realm? Yeah, the thing is that there are several layers of this problem on one level you have a cooperation and a relationship between Russian and Ukrainian journalists which is absolutely fine we've been known each other for years so if not decades we trust each other and even as we speak there are several projects going on joint projects where Russian journalists are helping Ukrainians and Ukrainian journalists for instance in investigating war crimes because part of this problem when you have a war crime committed is to identify people who are behind this crime and that means understand the military structure security services structure these kind of things and here you have skills of Russian investigative journalists who know how to do data mining who know how the Russian power ministries work and how security and military work so this is already existing and I think it's absolutely brilliant but there is also a political level if you have a Russian passport and you're trying and you're applying for visa these days and also for military accreditation unfortunately what we see it's just not possible to get these documents and to get into Ukraine if you have a Russian passport we do have several examples of Russian journalists who reported this war but it was only in two first months of the war we have an example of Elena Kostychenko a new newspaper and Yulia Yeparova at Medusa but we are talking about March, April 2022 now it's unfortunately but it seems to be that it's just not possible I don't know what should be done to change the political attitude and of course there is finally the third level is public opinion of course now if you are I assume because last time I've been in Ukraine was quite a while ago because of this war I assume it would be really tricky for Russian journalists with Moscow accent for instance to be in Ukraine to talk to civilians it would be a very difficult challenge I reported several wars and terrorist attacks but I think what is going on right now is absolutely incomparable with this kind of experience because now you are on one of the sides of this war which makes things very, very challenging but still I think it's possible still I think it's important to think and talk about this because it is a way to talk back to people who are still in Russia Andre thank you we're going to take one more from the audience and we're going to take your question and here comes the microphone right there it's Eric Lohr from American University and I just wanted to give a call out to something I'm involved in it's called the Russian Global Academy and the aim is kind of a large one to try to create a community among displaced scholars Russian speaking scholars around the world and it's off to a very difficult start this is a big task to try to do it but we're going to do what we can and in the short run we're giving short term grants and funds to go to conferences and pursue research by other means other than in Russia and I was wondering if you guys have heard of other initiatives on the professional and academic side of things we're restricted to just social sciences and humanities but I wonder if there are other projects like this underway thank you Eric before they respond would you say a word about where one finds out how to apply the short term grant you can just google it Russian Global Academy and it's at George Washington University run by Marlon Larwell and funded generously by the U.S. Russian Foundation terrific we have represented right here who would like to respond to that last question well there's free Russia free university which is actually the first university that brings together exiled scholars exiled university professors to provide education university level education to all Russians in disciplines maybe that are not possible to teach inside Russia I know of a second program that Zhanna Nemtsova is currently has just gotten accredited in Germany maybe Andrei Margarita can add to that it's in the Czech Republic to the best of my knowledge yes there is a big initiative in Prague actually the problem is again the visa regulations of the Czech Republic so those Russian students who actually got admitted to the program they are having troubles entering the European Union even those applicants with dual citizenship like for instance Israel and Russia so one person actually was denied entry based on the second unreported Russian citizenship so well the problem exists but you know it's a really difficult to take advantage of it especially for those who are coming from Russia so and following on this well scholars at risk they sporadically provide some assistance but of course Ukrainians are the first priority and Russians and Belarusians are coming not even next in line I would say this is a big of a problem so there is no I would say programs whatsoever that would target Russian scholars at the moment in the European Union apart from the ones already mentioned Margarita thank you I'm going to let that be the last word from the panel I'm going to tell you you three Margarita Andre and Natalia that was superb that was as good, challenging, rich and stimulating a discussion on this subject as I've heard I want to thank Greg Pfeiffer for getting us all together and leading us in this congratulations to all of you thank you for that and Greg we're going to offer you final words please do we have the microphone on? Jeff thank you so much for moderating so expertly and all our panelists I can again only second Jeff this is really really stimulating an important discussion and thanks to you all for coming here to the US Institute of Peace joining online and thank you to USIP it's been really really terrific just a word about our future panels we will have three more on Russian exiles here the next one will be in two weeks time about the Russian political opposition in exile that will take place on Thursday, October 5th at 10 a.m. Eastern time panelists will include Ekaterina Shulman Vladimir Milov and Sergei Alexashenko please join us for that they'll be discussing which are the main exile political groups and how they're trying to oppose Putin's Kremlin from outside the country then we will discuss Russian scholars in exile, thank you for raising that very important subject Eric that will be on Thursday, November 16th also at 10 a.m. Eastern how are Russian academics abroad trying to keep teaching researching and preserving Russia's intellectual capital for future generations and finally in January we will discuss the question on all of our minds post-Putinist Russia what are the plausible scenarios what roles should the US and other western countries be playing and what lessons have we learned if any from the 1990s please stay tuned for the exact date that is still to be determined thanks you again and I look forward to continuing this conversation