On October 26th, 2023 Grigory Yavlinsky, the prominent Russian opposition politician met with the Russian president Vladimir Putin. This must have been an unusual event for both sides – the first one-to-one meeting between the politicians since May 2014. There was only one more encounter in March 2018 when President Putin met with Mr. Yavlinsky and other candidates who ran for the Russian presidency that year.
On top of that the timing of the meeting proved to be interesting, while the content of the discussion and the aftermath could be described as ambiguous. In other words: “What was it all about?”
Taken at face value, the Putin/Yavlinsky meeting was mainly about the war in Ukraine. President Putin decided to give Mr. Yavlinsky a chance to put across his long-standing anti-war position. Possibly, this could be read as an attempt by Kremlin to send a political signal that Moscow is ready to negotiate a ceasefire. Mr. Yavlinsky is seen as a credible anti-war politician. He is currently gathering ten million signatures in support of his party Yabloko, which has a strongly anti-war platform. Could it mean that his anti-war views would be tolerated or even allowed to sip into mainstream politics as the Russian administration is scraping its way out from the bloody and costly war?
A darker and more cynical view of the event is that Mr. Yavlinsky was offered a deal (not necessarily in too many words but clear enough for him to read between the lines). He is allowed to run for Russian presidency in March 2024 on his anti-war platform. In return, he is effectively legitimising the process and the outcome of the elections.
Grigory Yavlinksy is a well-known Russian opposition politician; he is the same age as Mr. Putin (both are 71); he has been in opposition longer than President Putin has been in power (since 1996 and 1999 respectively). Mr. Yavlinsky and his party Yabloko have strong anti-war views, they sounded alarm about the coming war during the Russian parliamentary campaign of 2021. Mr. Yavlinsky ran for Russian presidency four times (he won 7.3% of the vote in 1996 and 1.05% in 2018, he was barred from running in 2012). Unlike many other prominent opposition figures, Grigory Yavlinsky is not in jail and is still residing in Moscow.
The meeting between Mr. Yavlinsky and Mr. Putin took place on October 26th, the day full of speculation that Vladimir Putin had died. Rather promptly on October 27th the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov denied the rumours of Putin’s demise.
On November 4th Mr. Yavlinsky gave a YouTube interview to the veteran Russian journalist and broadcaster Alexei Venediktov. The interview mainly focused on the war in Ukraine, which was discussed during Mr. Yavlinsky’s meeting with President Putin. When asked a direct question about Mr. Putin’s health and appearance, Grigory Yavlinsky confidently replied that the Russian president was his normal self.
Mr. Yavlinsky did not disclose who initiated the meeting (and why) but said that it had been a serious discussion which lasted for an hour and a half. The focal point was Mr. Yavlinsky’s anti-war position and his vision of the future relations between Russia and Ukraine. Mr. Yavlinsky offered himself as a negotiator with Ukraine to achieve an immediate ceasefire.
Mr. Yavlinsky insisted that he managed to give a detailed account of his anti-war position to Mr. Putin. Anyone who is opposed to the anti-war position, Mr. Yavlinsky said, “is responsible for mindless deaths of a huge number of people”. Vladimir Putin does not share this view “at the moment”, but “this [Mr. Yavlinsky’s anti-war position] is now a subject for consideration”.
“By the way”, the opposition politician said in the interview, “the events have been moving fast, very fast, if you have noticed. In the last five-seven days the talks on this subject on the other [presumably Ukrainian] side have become very active”. According to Mr. Yavlinksy, the Ukrainian press has been seriously discussing his meeting with Mr. Putin on October 26th, while the Russian press has only mentioned “a laughable and pointless matter” of the next presidential elections in Russia[1]. Mr. Yavlinsky does not have doubts about the outcome of the elections: it is laughable not to expect that Vladimir Putin would be re-elected.
Talking about the war, Mr. Yavlinsky said that Ukraine might have been in a much stronger negotiating position a year ago “after events around Kharkov and Kherson”. That moment [for negotiations] has been missed and in that respect, Ukraine has lost, he believes. (Russia has lost much more, in my view, including the illusion of being one the global superpowers). At the meeting with the Russian president, Mr. Yavlinsky offered himself as a negotiator with Ukraine. Vladimir Putin did not respond to the offer, Mr. Yavlinsky said.
When asked by the broadcaster what the negotiating position would have been if he were appointed to hold talks with Ukraine, Mr. Yavlinsky replied that it would be an immediate ceasefire, not substantive talks on the shape of the front line or fate of the territories.
Mr. Yavlinsky was directly asked about Mr. Putin’s health and appearance, how Mr. Putin behaved in person during the one-to-one. Mr. Yavlinsky confidently replied that the private dialogue with Mr. Putin was “absolutely normal”, the President was the same as he remembered him from meetings going back twenty years. The meeting took place on October 26th, the day when the health and the very physical existence of Vladimir Putin was called into question.
In the YouTube interview, Mr. Yavlinsky comes across as sincere but also on the defensive. A cynic would ask how such a man could have survived a lifetime in opposition in Russia. My guess is that Yavlinky’s political longevity is down to him being treated by the Russian ruling class as both “useful idiot” and “toothless idiot”. While his humanist position is consistent and admirable it is completely lost on (or simply unknown to) many Russians (at least “at the moment”). Also consistent and admirable is his long-standing position that election not revolution should change the regime in Russia. It’s a pity that Mr. Yavlinsky himself does not expect such an election to happen any time soon.
[1] The first round of the next is scheduled for March 17, 2024.