After more than a year of preparations, I am delighted to announce that the Russian Anti-War Committee now has official representation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The goal – empowering anti-Putin democratic Russians to help bring justice-based peace to Ukraine and force the fundamental regime change in Russia were in the focus of discussion with us, with the Russian democratic forces.

We have created a contact group led by Dmitry Gudkov and comprising the leaders of PACE and representatives of the Russian democratic opposition forces. Estonian MP Eerik-Niiles Kross will act as our General Rapporteur at PACE.

Last week, our first meeting took place in Paris. I attended, along with Eerik-Niiles Kross, Dmitri Gudkov, Sergey Aleksashenko, Ekaterina Shulman, Anastasia Shevchenko, Kirill Martynov and Maksim Kurnikov.

Discussions at the meeting focused on how to fight Putin’s regime on the global stage. Eerik-Niiles presented a roadmap for our joint efforts and reaffirmed that PACE does not recognize Putin’s regime as legitimate.

We passed on our list of 1,000 Russians who have been imprisoned or otherwise repressed for their anti-war stances – their freedom will be lobbied for at PACE, in the hope that solutions can be found, as was the case with the recent prisoner exchange.

We also discussed some problems with existing European sanctions, particularly those that discriminate against Russians as a whole, such as the Czech bill to forbid only Russian citizens from holding dual citizenship.

We raised the question of granting passports to exiled Russians and offered our assistance in verification – the Anti-War Committee already has initiatives in place carrying out this work.

This is a huge step forward for the Russian democratic opposition. We are now recognized by a body that cut ties with Putin’s regime years ago, enabling us to co-ordinate our activities at a high level.

While the regime might have abandoned millions of its citizens, we aim to demonstrate how a proper, democratic government will protect their interests, while ensuring that the regime is weakened to the greatest possible extent.