Below is the continuation of Grigory Pasko’s exclusive interview with Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who talks about the Putin-Medvedev diarchy, Gerhard Schroeder, Barack Obama, and the second trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Read part 1 of the interview here.

Andrei Illarionov, appearing before the foreign affairs committee of the US House of Representatives, characterized the country as a territory that had been captured by a Corporation; when real political power in the country belongs not to one person, not to a family, not to a military junta, not to a party and not to an ethnic group, but to a corporation of special services employees. Moreover, the characterization of this corporation almost completely coincides with the classical definition of a mafia. A question: how can one fight a mafia using non-mafia methods?

The fact is that I don’t know of a single example of successfully fighting a mafia using mafia methods. I know that mafias fight with each other: narcocartels, there was such a fight that went on in Italy. As a rule, they would destroy each other or one of the groupings would have the victory. I don’t agree that you need to fight the Putinite mafia using its own means. This isn’t right. First, because the opposition doesn’t have such resources. Second, our strength – is in our convictions. And their weakness – in the absence of convictions. Their convictions – power and money. Alexander Nevsky once said «Not in strength is God, but in the truth!» Their strength – power, money, informational resources and a machine of repression. Their weakness is in the fact that they have no ideology, convictions, principles. We’ve got all that.

Our weakness is that we don’t have informational resources, special services, a machine of repression. We – are antipodes. Why do they despise us – Illarionov, Milov, Nemtsov, Kasparov – more than the communists, the Nazis? Because we’re an ideological opposition. An opposition of ideas, a spiritual opposition to Putin. He considers that Russia – is a half-finished, Asiatic country, one that hasn’t yet matured enough for democracy, that our people – are cattle. This is why he doesn’t need freedom, elections, honest courts. That’s what he considers. He’s got a deeply contemptuous attitude towards the people. By the way, there’s a paradox in this: he despises and fears the people, but the people love him. This often happens in families where there isn’t mutual love. Some love, while another allows them to love him. Although to love a power – that’s perverted. You can love children, mother, women, father… But towards power you can have an attitude of trust-distrust.