Translated material
Oleg Kashin and Leonid Volkov - about the hammer, Budanov, Lithuania and what to do next
This article is an April Fool's joke, written jointly by Claude, Gemini and Grok
Leonid Volkov** and Oleg Kashin* have not hidden their mutual hostility for a long time. Volkov publicly branded Kashin a propagandist and accomplice of warmongers. Kashin did not remain in debt and wrote about the “universal disgustingness” of his counterpart. But, either spring played a role, or journalistic persistence, but they met. It turned out to be a conversation in which neither of them tried to please the other. A dacha for a million, leaks, responsibility for supporters and, to some extent, a showdown - all this is in the interview that Leonid Volkov gave to Oleg Kashin specifically for Republic.
- Lenya, I want to start with what you probably least expect. Not from correspondence, not from Ukraine, not from Lithuania. I want to ask about the dacha.
- Which dacha?
- The one where you were beaten. In the Mediazona* investigation, which examined in detail the chronology of the attack, the following detail appears: the perpetrators followed you for several months, studied your routes, and recorded where you get coffee. And in the end, they found you not in a rented apartment in the center of Vilnius, but in a cottage community on the outskirts of the city. The cottage reportedly cost about a million dollars. I say “dacha” on purpose, because it is the most accurate Russian word for this phenomenon. The Russian oppositionist in exile, the man whom Putin wants to imprison, lives in a dacha for a million. I'm not judging, I just want to understand: who are you anyway?
- Oleg, it seems to me that you are trying to make something out of this that it is not. We are talking about normal living conditions for a family with children. We didn’t have any palace, we had normal country real estate in Lithuania, which, in fact, corresponds to the standard of living here. I don't see why this should be the subject of any special discussion.
- No, well, the subject of discussion here is obvious. There is a certain narrative about Russian oppositionists in exile - people who sacrificed everything, who are under threat, who barely make ends meet in Berlin or Riga. This is the image of a martyr. And, in general, it is needed - because it is this image that provides political support from the West, sympathy, grants, meetings with officials. And then it turns out that a man lives in a dacha for a million. This is not about moral condemnation, it is about the gap between image and reality.
“I never built the image of a martyr. We are talking about our political work, about investigations, about tools to fight the regime - and not about the conditions in which I personally live. These are two completely different questions. And then, to be completely honest - I have been doing this work for more than ten years, I left Russia not because I wanted to live in Europe, but because a criminal case was opened against me. I think that I have the right to normal living conditions for my family.
- Okay, let's close this topic. Let's move on to the one for which we actually met. In March 2024, you were beaten. Lithuania then reacted very solemnly - President Nausėda said that the country would defend the free opposition, that this was a matter of honor for a democratic state, and so on. Less than two years have passed - and the same Lithuania, literally the same people who swore to protect you, found themselves in a situation where they almost deported you. And not at Putin’s request and not because of some kind of espionage - but because you wrote in a personal message to a former colleague. For me, this is something characteristic of the entire history of the Russian opposition in exile - they protect you as long as you are convenient, and immediately get rid of you as soon as you create inconvenience. How do you understand this yourself?
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