⚔️ Europe’s doomed effort to unite the Russian opposition

Also in this issue: Why Russia’s domestic aviation manufacturing industry has failed to produce a single plane in 2025

Hello and welcome to your essential guide to Russian politics and economics! This time we look at:

• What we know about the Council of Europe’s attempt to establish an official organ to represent the exiled, anti-Putin Russian opposition.

• Why Russia’s domestic aviation manufacturing industry has failed to produce a single plane in 2025.

We also look briefly at the repeated destruction of a memorial to murdered journalist Anna Politkovskaya, some angry reactions to a jump in inflation, and the sale of one of Russia’s biggest airports to a longtime friend of Putin.

⏳ This newsletter contains 2123 words—it will take about 10 minutes to read.

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The exiled Russian opposition’s first ‘official’ institution

The establishment of a Council of Europe platform for Russia’s democratic, anti-Putin opposition has raised questions about transparency, and legitimacy.

European officials have often complained privately in recent years about the fragmentation, infighting, and competing agendas of Russia’s exiled opposition. In a bid to address this problem, the Council of Europe announced Monday it had chosen 15 delegates for its “Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces” that it hopes will “strengthen Russian democratic forces to carry out democratic change in Russia and achieve a lasting and just peace in Ukraine.”

How were delegates chosen? Exiled Russian opposition groups could not agree on holding a vote for members to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) platform, and were unable to come up with an agreed list of representatives—effectively shifting the political responsibility for the composition of the platform onto PACE.

The resulting selection procedure was controversial, and opaque. The resolution establishing the platform, which was passed by PACE in October, contained no details about the process. Nor were any released subsequently. Apparently, PACE simply collected applications sent to a Proton email inbox. A total of 209 applications were received, one Russian opposition figure told Faridaily (he himself was not included in the delegation). He claimed: “There was no filtering on the Russian side.”