Leonid Volkov

Born into Soviet Jewish intelligentsia, leading Russian opposition figure, Leonid Volkov is now in exile in Lithuania. Through lawyers, he liaises with one of Russia’s most prominent political prisoners, his friend Alexei Navalny who is serving nine years in a maximum-security prison. Leonid was Navalny’s chief-of-staff for his Moscow mayoral campaign in 2013 and his presidential campaign against Vladimir Putin in 2018 when the two friends founded the Russia’s Future Party. From exile and prison, they and others are preparing for Putin’s fall and the creation of a modern, more peaceful Russia. “I do strongly believe that one day Russia will become a free and democratic country, a part of European family, where it belongs by its whole culture and history,” Volkov says. As a special guest on a Liberal Democrat European Group webinar, Volkov will outline how he grew up in an era of hope when Russia appeared to be warming toward liberal democracy, how he and Navalny used the Internet to muster political support from tens of millions, how the iron fist of Russian state smashed down against them and how he now sees Russia’s long-term future.

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