«My Fear and Hatred» — A Confession or a Testament?
This text is not an investigation or an indictment. Rather, it is a personal attempt to reflect on what has happened and to understand how we arrived at the point where we are now. It is an attempt to assemble a coherent picture from the fragments of facts and my own feelings, in order to stop deceiving myself.
Today, the FBK (Anti-Corruption Foundation) once again reminded me of Alexei Navalny’s text «My Fear and Hatred,» written in the summer of 2023. I reread it, and it now feels far more terrifying and prophetic. It was not a political program. It was the confession of a man from my generation and my parents’ generation. A requiem for the hopes of the 90s, which, as he wrote, were «sold out, drank away, and squandered.» It was a repentance for supporting the «ends justify the means» principle in the ‘96 election, for which we are all now paying the price. And it was his main, existential fear—not of Putin, but of the possibility that society, given a new chance, would step on the same rake again, would once again compromise with «unpleasant people.»
At the end of this cry from the soul, searching for some kind of support, he recommended reading a new book by Sergei Guriev. In the world from which he was writing, Guriev was a symbol of hope for him. A symbol that principles and pragmatism could coexist.
And this is where the tragedy begins, the scale of which we could not have guessed at the time. This text, this confession, if you think about it, became the dividing line in the events of recent years, splitting them into «before and after.» Because at the very moment Navalny was writing from his cell about the fear of compromise, his own team wasn’t just walking—it was hurtling down this path at full speed.
It was during these very days in the summer of 2023 that Pevchikh and Grozev were deeply involved in the «secret Silver-Lake Project»—a shadowy and, it seems, quite amateurish attempt to negotiate with Putin for an exchange of Navalny for Krasikov. And it was at this time that Alexander Zheleznyak already held the post of treasurer and vice president in their American legal entity, the [Anti-Corruption Foundation], where donations were flowing.
A former «semi-FSB fixer,» who laundered a prosecutors’ slush fund, a thief, a co-author of the repressive Federal Law 115 that led to the creation of «Rosfinmonitoring,» and also a recipient of a state award from Putin.
Alexei’s organization was already rotting from within. And it seems he knew none of this. And we didn’t want to, and likely couldn’t, see it. The entire subsequent story is merely a chronicle of a corpse’s decomposition.
Part I: A Betrayal of Trust
The final act of this half-life, the most painful and vile, unfolded not on the political stage, but in the halls of regional courts and in the lives of ordinary people this year, in 2025. When the wave of emotion from Alexei’s death had long subsided, when the media firestorm had died down, a dull reality set in. And this reality turned out to be more terrifying than any speculation. I am talking, of course, about the «FBK donations case.»
To understand how this happened, we must go back to 2021. In January, Navalny is arrested. In the summer, his organizations are declared «extremist,» and any money transfer to them becomes a criminal offense. Key employees were urgently evacuated to other countries in the spring, abandoning regional offices and those deemed less important by the foundation’s leadership. The old model of «crowdfunding» seemed to have collapsed. They needed to find money to support their lives and the organization’s work. And there were many people eager to shower them with money; it was the peak of popular support and sympathy. In August 2021, Volkov announced the creation of a fundraising method known to be unsafe for Russian residents—via Stripe, which would only be disabled for Russians in February 2022. A method that, as many would later discover (and some almost immediately), left a digital trail leading directly to investigators’ offices. Dozens of criminal cases, soon to be hundreds, and the ruined lives of those who trusted the FBK—this is the price of that technical solution, which was presented as completely safe.
But the most terrible part was not the mistake itself. It was what caused it and the reaction to its discovery. How did people who built their entire movement on trust reach such a level of cynicism towards their own supporters?
I believe the answer is that at some point, they came to believe that the «Navalny» brand was an indulgence. That his suffering, his martyr’s fate, gave them the right to do anything. They saw how his name opened any door in Western offices and decided it would work the same way with the public. That people would «swallow» anything: shady characters in leadership, reputation laundering, failures, gaslighting opponents, and supporters set up for criminal prosecution.
This was a direct violation of Alexei’s own principles. I remember how, during his lifetime, he seemed to deliberately avoid close contact with Western politicians to avoid giving the Kremlin a reason to accuse him of foreign influence. His team began to do the exact opposite—they started to monetize his name and his suffering. They turned him into a shield to cover up any agreements, even the dirtiest ones.
A bitter but, it seems, most accurate assessment was given by an activist, Ervin Weikow, who wrote that they began to treat their own fellow citizens like «shit on a shoe and expendable material.»
This cynicism was not born in a vacuum. It solidified after they got used to justifying their compromises and failures with a mythical fight against Putin. And they finally got used to it, it seems, in 2024, after Alexei left the world of the living. They no longer needed to protect their terrible secrets from him.
Part II: The War of Clans and the Defense of a Blackmailer
How did they learn to justify the unjustifiable? The year 2024 became their year of public coming-out. The year when, after many futile attempts by Katz to fix the situation, the dirty laundry burst into the open, and they had to defend it, burning the remnants of their reputation and turning into a caricature of the very 90s oligarchic clans that Navalny despised.
It all started with a preemptive strike. When, in the spring of 2024, Maxim Katz, in an irritated joke after Pevchikh decided to stage a «trial of the nineties,» asked a question about the banker Alexander Zheleznyak, the reaction was swift and disproportionate. In July, figures affiliated with the FBK leveled accusations against Katz of working for the secret services. This was a consistent method: anyone who digs into us is our enemy, and anyone who meddles in our compromises is a Putinist agent of foreign intelligence.
In the autumn, when the scandal surrounding Zheleznyak had crystallized and could no longer be hidden, they went all-in. Instead of distancing themselves from a man with an FSB background, the FBK leadership and Yulia Navalnaya personally came to his defense. They were committing political suicide in front of everyone, and this irrationality was maddening. Why?
For a long time, I couldn’t find an answer, until I accepted the simplest and most terrifying version. They were defending him not because they believed in his innocence or their own righteousness. They were defending him because he had them by the balls.
He was not just the operator of their finances; he was the keeper of their secrets. To kick him out would mean turning a silent accomplice into a deadly enemy, capable of destroying everything with a single interview. He could likely tell the truth about how they knew about his past from the very beginning. He could reveal the names of the donors the FBK has been hiding since mid-2021. He could drag other «independent» media outlets [like «Proekt»], which were apparently feeding from the same troughs, into the scandal.
And most importantly, he could come out and say: Navalny’s death could have been avoided. To say that the organization for which he gave his life was a compromised simulacrum.
Their public defense of Zheleznyak was not a political stance, but the panic of people being blackmailed. This panic also explains their aggressive response with a direct attack on Katz through Patyulina. And the attack on Nevzlin and Khodorkovsky and their projects, which many actually believe was an order from the Kremlin related to the old YUKOS cases, in this context no longer looks like a simple fight for a monopoly, but a desperate attempt to demonstrate loyalty to some unknown and unseen forces.
This was not a sudden paranoia caused by failure. Even when Navalny was alive, they engaged in gaslighting and bullying anyone who disagreed with them, who didn’t dance to their tune, under the slogan «if you’re not with us, you’re for Putin.» They were forgiven for this because everyone believed that Navalny could defeat injustice and fix everything. And Alexei himself seemed to somehow control and restrain these rather toxic activities. His death removed the last brake. Everything that had been a subliminal working style burst out, and «Katz’s trap,» which they walked into themselves, only amplified this aggression. But it is important to note the exchange of political prisoners that took place in August as a key element.
Part III: Playing by Someone Else’s Rules
In his post «My Fear and Hatred,» Navalny repented for turning a blind eye to fraud in ‘96 for the sake of a «higher goal.» His team, in the summer of 2023, seemed to decide to repeat this sin. For the «higher goal» of saving their leader, they got involved in a shadow game played by the rules of the secret services, confident that they could «outplay» the Kremlin.
What exactly happened? Was it their mistake, or were they used? Now that the emotions have settled, both versions can be considered.
The «Stupidity» Version: In this version, their catastrophic alliance with Zheleznyak did not teach them caution. On the contrary, it instilled in them a fatal sense of their own competence in backroom dealings. They believed they had successfully «tamed» a system player and could now play on the world stage. Their amateurish insistence on the «Silver-Lake Project,» born from this arrogance, could have provoked the Kremlin into physically eliminating Navalny. They themselves, with their overconfidence, raised the stakes to the limit, and Putin solved the problem in the most radical way. The compromise with Zheleznyak became their psychological springboard into this suicidal adventure.
The «Plan» Version: This version is even more terrifying. In it, the plan arose from an opportunity that was fortunate for the Kremlin. Seeing that the FBK was compromised from within by the presence of a fugitive banker who was previously in the system, they realized the organization had become vulnerable to manipulation. He didn’t create this rot; he merely used it brilliantly to draw them into a game whose finale was predetermined. The activities of Pevchikh and Grozev served as the perfect cover for the murder. While they were «negotiating,» Navalny was already being transported to the «Polar Wolf» colony. They were used «in the dark,» and their self-assurance was the fuel that powered this monstrous spectacle.
The culmination came in February 2024 in Munich. The news of Navalny’s death arrived at the moment when his associates, by their own account, were expecting a triumph. In shock and grief, Yulia Navalnaya met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and uttered a phrase full of tragedy: «Don’t give this man [Krasikov] away.» It might seem she was trying to stop a game in which her late husband had become a pawn.
But the game could no longer be stopped. In August 2024, a major exchange took place, and its main prize was Vadim Krasikov. The Kremlin got its man back. The opposition received a «consolation prize» in the form of a few political prisoners, whose release, unfortunately, did not spark a new political impulse but only reinforced the general sense of defeat and disappointment. As the same Ervin Weikow sarcastically remarked about the performance of one of the freed prisoners, Kevin Lik, who tore up his passport: «Wow, how brave.» The whole result boiled down to «making a career for this CheLik as a token Russian opposition figure in Germany.» Ilya Yashin became known for losing all the public rating he had received in advance, reducing himself to the level of posting photos of poop on Twitter and calling everyone to demand they stop communicating with Katz. And Kara-Murza continued to do what he had always done, ignoring society. The unresolved questions for the FRF hammered the final nail in the coffin.
For Navalny’s team, it was a failure. Maria Pevchikh was reportedly removed from further negotiations because, after Navalny’s death, she went public and blabbed that Abramovich had supposedly said everything was set, Navalny was about to be prepared for the exchange, and the very act of publicizing such a sensitive topic could have ruined everything and canceled the success already achieved. Pevchikh’s escapade did not save the leader but, wittingly or unwittingly, helped the Kremlin achieve its goal. However, this did not stop her from presenting herself as almost the organizer of the exchange, taking credit for it, and then calling the completed exchange the «Navalny exchange,» which, considering everything that happened, is a very cynical joke.
So-called «another resounding victory for the team.»
Why did they even decide to play this game? Where did this readiness for shady deals with the Kremlin and simultaneous cooperation with someone like Zheleznyak come from? The answer, I believe, lies at the very beginning of their path in exile.
Part IV: A Deal with the Past
Where did this fatal self-confidence, this readiness for shadow games and compromises, come from? It did not appear out of nowhere. It was a direct consequence of a deal made in 2021-2022, when, finding themselves in a desperate situation, they formed an alliance with the very past their leader hated.
After Navalny’s arrest and the dismantling of their structures in Russia, the team found themselves in exile, in a state of suspension and even functional disarray. The old funding methods no longer worked, and they hadn’t tried new ones. Major investors lined up, either expecting the regime to fall soon or realizing that they could solve their own problems through the FBK. At this moment, Alexander Zheleznyak entered the stage.
It wasn’t the FBK that sought a «fixer.» The «fixer» found them. To secure himself on all fronts and build a «political roof» for himself in the West, Zheleznyak, it seems, on his own initiative, foisted himself upon the FBK leadership and the former Free Russia Foundation functionary Valuev, with whom they founded RADR. Zheleznyak, according to Volkov, offered the FBK a «turnkey solution» for all their financial problems.
From this perspective, they weren’t cynical clients; they were naive and desperate recipients. They gratefully accepted the help without delving into the details and voluntarily outsourced the most vulnerable part of their work—their finances.
This alliance with a perfect representative of the 90s era—a man who made money off people, collaborated with the FSB, and participated in creating laws that became repressive—became their original sin.
Epilogue
Now we can return to the very beginning—to the text «My Fear and Hatred» from August 11, 2023. In his cry from the soul, searching for hope and an antidote to cynicism, Alexei Navalny advised his supporters to read the book by economist Sergei Guriev. For him, Guriev seemed to be a symbol of principle, a beacon that would keep them from straying off course, and generally just a very close associate.
And here is the final, finishing touch to this story.
When the scandal surrounding the FBK’s alliance with Alexander Zheleznyak was developing in the summer and autumn of 2024, and later reached its peak, Sergei Guriev publicly «vouched for» both the FBK and Zheleznyak, accusing those interested in the topic of working for the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), and later avoided any comment on the matter.
The man whom Navalny held up as an example of a principled individual turned out to be part of the system of justification and concealment of the very compromises Navalny feared most. The moral authority cited by the deceased leader helped legitimize the use of his name as a cover for dirty secrets.
The circle was complete. And this is no longer just the story of the half-life of one political organization. It is the story of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the entire milieu that claimed to be the nation’s conscience. They didn’t just lose to the Kremlin. They became a caricature of the very past they hated and proved their leader’s greatest fear to be right: the chance was squandered once again. And for me, like for many others, this is simply sad.