The conference of the Anti-War Committee of Russia in Strasbourg on 20-21 May 2026 was remembered for one discussion and one picture.
The discussion took place at the panel “Russia through the eyes of Europe: Where do analysts go wrong?” between Mikhail Khodorkovsky and MEPs Rasa Jukneavičienė from Lithuania and Ondřej Kolarě from the Czech Republic.
Khodorkovsky expressed his conviction quite broadly, but clearly, that “Europe does not understand the worldview of Russian society, traumatized by World War II, which is why the concept of ‘strategic depth’ remains relevant in the mind: the more territory, the more difficult it is for the enemy army to reach the capital… Therefore, if for Europeans, the accession of countries to NATO is a matter of their free choice, then for Russia it is a threat of a repeat of what happened in 1941, when the enemy was under the capital, and the country’s second city was under blockade.”
To this, Yukniavichene replied:
“I didn’t really understand you about NATO accession – what is the alternative? We Lithuanians don’t have strategic depth…
You need to distance yourself from the ideology of the “‘Russian world’. Completely.”
Kolář said that he could not understand a country that had Oreshnik but no warm toilets. To which Gusinsky replied that if Europe did not have Oreshnik, then other people would use its warm toilets.
As for the picture, it is here, in the photo. In this form, D. Bykov participated as a speaker in the panel “The Future of Russian Resistance.”
Pavlo Zhovnirenko
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