The head of the investigative organization, which is run by imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, resigned on Thursday after calling for the lifting of sanctions against the heads of a group of organizations, including one of Russia’s largest banks.
On Wednesday, Alexei Venediktov, former editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Moscow radio station Echo, released what he said was a letter signed by Leonid Volkov and other prominent figures to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and head of European diplomacy Josep Borrell.
Volkov denied signing the document, but this Thursday released a copy of a document he himself sent to Borrell in October asking for sanctions to be lifted. He admitted that he had exceeded his powers and was going to leave the Anti-Corruption Fund.
“It is far from the truth that all Russian businesses are beneficiaries or supporters of the Putin regime,” he wrote to Borrell. “On the contrary, many of them have taken a firm stance in support of Ukraine.”
In a text posted this Thursday on the Telegram platform, he said he believed Russia’s military defeats and troubles at the time could have been used to stoke public condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine and split the Russian elite, but acknowledged his mistake.
Navalny, who exposed the corruption of the Russian leadership and organized mass actions against the Kremlin, is serving a nine-year sentence in a strict regime colony located 250 kilometers east of Moscow.