MEDITATION magazine prepared a special issue for the NATO Summit and it is now lying in many supermarkets in Washington, D.C. (Whole Foods) and elsewhere. It is an honor to be on the same pages as the Dalai Lama, but even more important to convey the simple message that the only way to peace is to get rid of Putin and Putinism. Thank you for this opportunity!
On March 20, 2014, the Russian State Duma (parliament) voted to annex and invade the Ukrainian region of Crimea. Out of 446 deputies, 445 voted in favor of this hostile action against Ukraine, and only one, Ilya Ponomarev, voted against it. Following his dissenting vote, Ponomarev was stripped of his parliamentary immunity and was exiled from Russia. He now lives in Ukraine and Washington D.C., and leads the Russian armed resistance against Putin from afar. Ilya’s rebels have already blown up billions of dollars of Russian military infrastructure and are aiming to stop the war by replacing Putin’s regime with a democratic government.
Kevin Ellerton: I know you believe violence is needed to end the war. Many Americans agree with you. But this is Meditation Magazine. We’re like hippies (laughing). We believe in nonviolent resistance. Could that work in Ukraine?
Ilya Ponomarev: (Smiling) I totally share this idea. I am leftist myself, and I do believe in global peace. I do believe in a world without state boundaries. My motherland is the whole humanity, and that is what I always promoted as the foundation of my political beliefs. But to establish that peace, you need to remove the fascists.
Kevin Ellerton: Have nonviolent methods been tried in Russia & Ukraine?
Ilya Ponomarev: I was personally one of the key organizers of the Bolotnaya movement in 2012. We were protesting against rigged elections, and it was purely nonviolent. There were hundreds of thousands of people on the streets of Moscow and other Russian cities who were trying to remove Putin from office with purely nonviolent methods. It was Putin who started killing us. It was not us who started to fight back. Even [during the annexation of Crimea], we still were resorting ourselves to nonviolent methods. But now, with missiles flying and many people being killed, we just don’t have time for this. Every day, a thousand people die in the field of war in Ukraine. So every day when we are just talking, it’s blood on our hands.
Kevin Ellerton: I interviewed Satish Kumar, a non-violence activist from India. He was saying war is never justified. I pushed back and said, should Ukrainians not fight back with weapons? He presented an interesting idea, that people from around the world could flood into Ukraine and stand non-violently, without weapons, saying, “No, we will not allow this.” He thinks that would shame the soldiers into saying, “I’m not going to fire at these people from all over the world who are coming non-violently.” Do you think that could possibly work in Ukraine?
Ilya Ponomarev: If by some miracle, we would see ten million people emerging at the front lines of this war, non-violently, standing between the soldiers and saying, “Here we are,” I think it may work. But you can never deliver ten million people at one time standing in front of those shooting lines. And that’s why you first need to achieve a ceasefire. Only then can people play the role. We [in the Russian resistance] have several thousand armed resistance fighters who are coming to suppress the police, to suppress the security forces, to suppress people who can shoot back on the protesters. Then nonviolent protestors – millions of people – would definitely be on the streets of Moscow, and they would achieve the change of the regime. But for this million people to come to the streets of Moscow, you need to suppress the police which are loyal to Putin. They are shooting at unarmed people. We saw that already. When they see [armed] resistance, they totally vanish. immediately. Actually, I think that we will have extremely limited violence in the situation of real changes in Russia. But to be nonviolent and have no blood, you need to show armed people who are standing in front of these police forces.
Kevin Ellerton: Satish wasn’t saying that there would be no blood among the nonviolent people, that they would stand ready to die but not ready to kill. I think it is possible. It does sound very idealistic, but if we can mass billions of dollars for weapons, if we can mass hundreds of thousands of soldiers, why couldn’t we mass hundreds of thousands or millions of peaceful people doing the same thing, essentially like an army but just with no weapons, maybe holding flowers and singing songs or something?
Ilya Ponomarev: Okay, if somebody is capable of mobilizing several million people coming to Ukraine, I think that we can actually even march from Kyiv to Moscow, and make a peace march, and then Putin would be gone. The question is how to get that large number of people who are – what you said is very important – ready to die. Because originally, they would be met with armed people, and you need to bravely, courageously be able to move forward. So to realistically do this, I think it’s very hard.