Russia looks to brand congress of exiled lawmakers ‘terrorist organisation’

Russia’s Supreme Court has been asked to recognise the Congress of People’s Deputies, a political movement of opposition lawmakers in exile, as a terrorist organisation, state-owned news agency TASS reported on Monday.

Ilya Ponomaryov, an exiled former lawmaker who leads the organisation, had a criminal case opened against him in February for attempting a coup and for running “a terrorist group”.

The Federal Security Service claimed Ponomaryov had established the Congress of People’s Deputies as a “new Russian government in exile”, and that he had been intending to violently overthrow Vladimir Putin’s government.

Ponomaryov, who resides in Kyiv, has been living in exile since 2016, having been the sole member of Russia’s State Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014 while he was a deputy in the early 2010s, and before he was impeached and charged with embezzlement.

Ponomaryov was targeted with multiple drone strikes on his Kyiv residence in the summer of 2024, the latest leaving him with shrapnel wounds.

He founded the Congress of People’s Deputies in 2022 in Poland alongside other outspoken ex-lawmakers like Gennady Gudkov, and it has since been framed by Ponomaryov and his associates as a government in exile, though it remains unrecognised by any state.

Ponomaryov is already listed on Russia’s register of “foreign agents”, as well as a separate list of “terrorists and extremists”. The latest session of the Congress of People’s Deputies took place in September in Warsaw.