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September 15, 2025: Since 2014 and Russia’s seizure of Crimea, individual Russian dissidents and small groups of Russian expatriates have occasionally opposed the Russian invasion in public. Their open opposition usually focuses on the harm Vladimir Putin and his dictatorial regime do to Russia, but they also oppose the regime’s war against Ukraine.
The Kremlin criminalizes any form of open opposition. The goal is silence—terrorized silence. For example, in February 2024, Putin had the Federal Security Service (FSB) arrest a Russian ballerina when she traveled to Russia from the U.S. to visit her family. The dancer held both Russian and U.S. citizenship (a dual national). The FSB accused the woman of raising money to support Ukraine’s military and quickly charged her with treason. The woman was distraught and afraid—the reactions the Kremlin wanted. Despite U.S. objections, in August 2024, a court convicted her of treason. Her act of treason? She made a small donation (around fifty dollars) to a U.S. nonprofit organization that provides refugees with medical and disaster relief supplies. The organization does criticize Russia’s government, but it is not an arm of the Ukrainian military.
In April 2025, Russia released the ballerina in a “prisoner swap” arranged by the U.S. State Department. Moscow exchanged the ballerina for a Russian-German dual national. The man was arrested in 2023 for obtaining sanctioned microelectronics from U.S. sources and smuggling the devices to Russia. He was definitely part of an illicit Russian military procurement network. The ballerina? She returned to the U.S.
From 2014 to February 2022, Russia waged a “slow war” in Ukraine. The media would feature Ukrainian citizens who were ethnic Russians and opposed the Russian seizure of Crimea and the war in Donbas. After the February 2022 all-out invasion failed, Putin’s government was shocked to learn that ethnic Russian communities preferred the Ukrainian government to the Kremlin. This was particularly evident in Kharkiv, which has a large ethnic Russian community. Thousands of ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens serve in Ukraine’s military forces.
Since 2022, there have been an increasing number of reports of Russian soldiers defecting to Ukraine. Some now serve with the RDK, a Ukrainian paramilitary group initially formed in August 2022. RDK is the abbreviation for Russian Volunteer Corps (Russkiy Dobrovolcheskiy Korpus). The Kremlin calls the RDK a terrorist organization. Some media refer to the RDK as “neo-Nazi.” This is certain: RDK personnel are not frightened ballerinas.
Ukrainian intelligence sources acknowledge that RDK personnel have carried out sabotage operations inside Russia. RDK soldiers participated in the March 2023 raid into Russia’s Bryansk Oblast. RDK fighters posted video of the raid on the internet and later claimed the raid demonstrated that the Russian border was poorly defended. The Kremlin called the raid terrorism. The RDK participated in the 2024 Kursk incursion. Being native Russian speakers, they were a perfect choice for reconnaissance and sabotage missions preceding the Kursk incursion. RDK volunteers come from various backgrounds. A British source says it has interviewed RDK soldiers who claim they once served with Wagner (Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mercenary force). Other RDK soldiers have diverse backgrounds: Russian policemen, some former prison inmates, and a handful of expatriate businessmen. There are also Russian civilians serving because they oppose Putin’s regime.
There are two other small Russian volunteer groups fighting with Ukrainian forces: the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Siberian Battalion. The Freedom of Russia Legion says most of its soldiers were Russian prisoners of war captured by Ukraine. They decided to fight Putin’s regime. The Siberian Battalion is an actual unit of the Ukrainian Army. Its personnel are native Russian citizens opposed to Putin. Several ethnic Buryats and Yakuts serve with this unit. Buryats are ethnic Mongols from the Republic of Buryatia and the Lake Baikal region. Ethnic Yakuts (also known as Sakha) live in several places in Siberia, including the Yakut Autonomous Republic. In 1689, imperial Manchu Qing China ceded control of the Buryat territory to Czarist Russia (Treaty of Nerchinsk). One source says the Buryats and Yakuts ultimately want to end Kremlin control of their home territories. (AB)