The furor surrounding Leonid Volkov’s statements is not a private scandal or yet another quarrel within the Russian emigre community. Nor is it a debate over whether he was right or wrong. 

At its core, it is a test of how resilient European legal principles remain under the pressures of war, political division and an emotionally overheated public sphere. That is why this case extends far beyond Volkov himself — however controversial, conflict-prone or toxic a politician he may be.

We must approach this from the simple and fundamental principle that everyone has the right to express their opinion, especially in private correspondence. This is not a matter of personal sympathies, moral judgments or political expediency, but a foundational legal principle. Otherwise, freedom of speech turns into a conditional privilege granted in exchange for loyalty.

What is systematically ignored in this story is the basic fact that we are dealing with private comments, not public calls to action, propaganda, incitement to violence or concrete acts. Harsh, emotional or even politically misguided criticism does not constitute an offense under European law.

This is precisely why Vilnius’ response to the episode carries such broader significance. Lithuania is not at war with Russia. It has not declared martial law or a state of emergency, nor introduced a special legal regime restricting civil rights. Any measures taken against a person lawfully residing in the country must therefore be assessed strictly within a peacetime legal framework. 

Under those conditions, even the hypothetical revocation of a residence permit on the basis of expressed opinions takes on the character of repression.

If the legal status of one opposition figure can be questioned for saying the wrong thing today, the same mechanism can be applied to a journalist, a researcher or an activist whose views become inconvenient tomorrow. At that point, political expediency begins to supersede the law, in direct contradiction to the European legal tradition.

Volkov’s criticism of the Russian Volunteer Corps should also be separated from judgments about his language. The group’s leadership has never concealed its far-right, and in some cases openly neo-Nazi, views. Denis Kapustin, one of its leaders, has been banned from entering the European Union since 2019 precisely because of neo-Nazi statements which German authorities said demonstrated an “aspiration to undermine the foundations of the free democratic order.” In other words, the EU has already made a legal assessment of this individual.

Against that background, an uncomfortable but unavoidable question arises: why should criticism of a person deemed........

© The Moscow Times