As you know from the cover of this book, my name is Ilya Vladimirovich Ponomarev. I was a member of the Russian State Duma from 2007 to 2016. And as you now know, I was the only member of the Russian Parliament to vote against the annexation of Crimea in 2014.
It was my vote against the annexation of Crimea that led to me being forced into exile from my own country while I was a sitting member of Parliament.
Now, in 2022, looking back on my lone vote on Crimea in 2014, it becomes easier to understand why I had become such a threat to Vladimir Putin because at the time of the annexation of Crimea, I predicted it would lead to a full-scale military conflict between Ukraine and Russia.
I also vowed at the time of the annexation that if Putin would invade, I would fight alongside Ukrainians against his troops. That’s what I am doing now, not only by publishing this book but also by creating, in collaboration with Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces, an uncensored, on-demand news channel in Russian for Russians called “February Morning,” with a team of 100 people who broadcast live from the heart of Kyiv and even (underground) from inside Russia, giving Russians a way to get news about their country unfiltered by Putin’s propaganda machine. And finally, and most importantly, by mounting up resistance in Russia, committed to fighting until Putinism is destroyed, along with its leaders and lackeys.
And what the hell, here are a few other facts from my life:
I was born in Moscow. My first job, at age fourteen, was with the Institute for Nuclear Safety at the Russian Academy of Sciences; this is where my father worked. I started my first successful tech start-up while in high school, at age sixteen.
At age twenty-one, I was working as a director of business development in the CIS (or Commonwealth of Independent States) countries for Schlumberger, the world’s largest provider of technology and services for the oil and gas industry.
At age twenty-four, I was the Vice President of Technologies at Yukos E&P, the leader of the Russian oil and gas industry.
At age twenty-seven, I left Yukos and got involved with several new entrepreneurial ventures, including a company called Arrava that offered interactive TV. Ted Turner from CNN was flying to Moscow in his jet to become our main investor at Arrava when Putin began his final crackdown on Russia’s NTV in 2001. Ted volunteered to mediate in resolving the crisis, was rejected, and went home without making an investment. At that very moment, I swore that I would do everything I could to prevent the state from interfering again in my affairs or anyone else’s, and my career in politics was born.
At age thirty-one, I became the Director of Russia’s High Technology Parks Task Force for the Ministry of Information Technology and Telecommunications. We successfully covered Russia with a network of technology parks aimed at fostering innovation, bringing our most talented entrepreneurs back home, and supporting an emerging economy.
At age thirty-two, I was elected to the State Duma and became the chairman of the Innovation and Venture Capital Subcommittee of the Committee for Economic Development and Entrepreneurship—the leading technology policymaker for the Russian state.
I was thirty-nine when I voted against the annexation of Crimea.
A few months after the vote on Crimea I was in California, when a reporter from the Russian daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta woke me up by calling with an unexpected question. “Have you read the latest Izvestia?”
It was their rival publication, so the question puzzled me quite a bit.
“Nope,” I replied. “I am in Silicon Valley, and I was asleep after a long meeting with a tech company about opening an office in Novosibirsk.”
“Okay,” he said. “Read it. Then call me back.”
It was then that I saw I had missed about a hundred calls during the night.
My wife called, my kids called, my parents called, my friends and colleagues from the Duma called. Other reporters called. Also, at least one employee of the president’s staff called, and insinuatingly asked “if I was going to an extraordinary session of parliament in Crimea on August 14?”
I quickly returned this call, even before I went online to read the latest Izvestia.
“This,” they said, “is a big event. Will you go?”
“If everyone else goes,” I said, “then, of course, I will go, too.”
“So,” they said, “that’s why we called, just to confirm if you are going or not.”
“If everyone else is going, then yes—I’m going.”
“But, do you need to think about it? In the context of your vote ”
“Are you saying that I shouldn’t go?” I asked.
“No, no, no, we’re not saying that. But we just want to be sure you’ve thought this through and are comfortable with this.”
There was nothing to think about. It was inappropriate for me as a deputy to succumb to such provocations.
“Okay. So, I just thought about it. And if everyone is going, then I will definitely be there, too.”
Then there was a call from my party’s Duma office. “Are you going to Crimea?”
“If everyone else is going, then I’ll go, too. I’m a deputy. It can’t be like that—a general meeting, and suddenly I’m not there!”
“And you,” they said, “think it will be okay?”
“Gosh, if you genuinely believe Crimea is Russia, then what should be not okay here?”
To be honest, I did not want to visit the occupied territory. However, if something important was to happen there, and a new escalation with Ukraine was being planned, then it was worth going and trying to prevent it, wasn’t it?
And then, yet another call from the Administration. “So, did you think about it?”
“Yes,” I said. “Nothing has changed.”
“Well, we’ve been thinking about it, too. We’ve been thinking about your safety in Crimea.”
“So, you don’t want me to go? Just say no. And I won’t go.”
“We can’t say that.”
“But you think it’s not safe for me to go?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Then I’m going.”
During all of these conversations with my party, and the office of the president’s staff, I was confused by one thing:
Why was everyone concerned about my safety if I went to Crimea? I just voted in support of the Ukrainians, so they should want to support me. Right?
What I didn’t know yet was that, while I slept, several disturbing pieces of news about me had been reported, hence the wake-up call from the reporter about the latest issue of Izvestia.
Well, the first piece of news was that I was dead.
You see, once I finally got online, what I discovered was a story that claimed that some “angry Crimeans” had drowned me in the Kerch Strait when I tried to drive to the peninsula. There was a photo of my car going down in the waters of the Black Sea.
Of course, I knew I was still in California. And still very much alive. And my car, I believed, was still in my Novosibirsk garage. However, that’s not what the Russian media said. Maybe they knew better? And who were these “angry Crimeans” who reportedly killed me for voting for them not to be invaded by another country?
Then there was the comment of the mobster whom the Kremlin installed as the leader of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov, “This so-called deputy Ponomarev wanted to come to us, but our people could not restrain themselves.”
And yet another call from the Administration: “Are you still going?”
This was starting to get funny. “You know it’s fake, right? You are talking to me. Clearly, I am not dead.”
“We know,” the caller said.
“So, you don’t want me to go?”
“We didn’t say that.”
“Well, if you don’t say it, then I am going. I’m not afraid of liars and I’m not afraid of looking into the face of danger. Moreover, I am not afraid of either the Russian or Ukrainian people, and I believe that I will always find a common language with them, unlike you!”
However, it turns out I was not going to that meeting in Crimea after all. Because while I was online reading about my own death, I discovered there were additional news stories—citing Federal bailiffs as their source—reporting that, even though I was dead, I also was forbidden to cross the state border back into my own country, Russia, and back to my district and my home.
And as all of this is quickly happening, I also had a sinking feeling in my stomach which only got worse after I fumbled through my pockets: I was now stranded 6,000 miles from home, and my total capital was twenty-one dollars and twenty-five cents.
Driven by the same sinking feeling, I raced to the nearest ATM. After inserting my Duma salary card, I immediately understood there would be no more money coming from there.
I had to immediately run back to my hotel, pack up, and leave. I had no money to pay for another night.
And then there I was, standing on a California street corner with $21 in my pocket, pulling a roller bag of clothes, with a computer in a backpack tossed over my shoulder, and desperately trying to work out some kind of plan for my family’s safety while on the phone with my wife who was back in Russia with my kids.
And then, my official phone as a deputy of the Russian State Duma went dead.
Are you waiting to hear me say that I was really stuck, in a jam, really screwed by Putin while I stood there on that Silicon Valley street corner?
I cannot do that.
The truth is, once I knew that my family was safe, the air of freedom outside of Russia was intoxicating.
This is surely why there have been so many former Soviets outside of Russia (and often in Silicon Valley) who have sucked in this same rarefied air—and then been so inspired by it to create companies like Google, PayPal, Skype, WhatsApp, Evernote, and many others.
A sea of opportunities opens up in front of smart, educated, and entrepreneurial Russians when they begin living abroad. It is so much more spacious than in Russia that they quickly plunge into their own businesses and begin to bathe and revel in their success, protecting it from competitors, often former compatriots. It is not so different than Chinese or Indian diasporas.
No matter what, when you are outside of Russia, common Russian problems seem distant and foolish. It is as if a heavy weight pressing on your shoulders has been removed in an instant.
In contrast, Silicon Valley is liberating. Here, sometimes it seems that you can live without any state influence and coercion from outside. (Of course, as I write this, the U.S. Congress is holding hearings about “big tech” and Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook that violate that feeling of freedom—more on that later.)
It is here that dreamers of all sorts gather and invent the future. Even before getting stuck here in 2014, I had been coming to Silicon Valley several times a year since the late 1990s with the mission of attracting businesses and jobs to Novosibirsk, while updating my contacts in the venture capital world and recharging myself over and over again in this atmosphere of entrepreneurship and empowerment.
At the same time, it’s true that most of my old Russian friends, even the wealthiest, chose to disappear into thin air when I called them from that California street corner, so as to not have to lend me any money. In such situations as being exiled, or being jailed, you quickly discover who your real friends are, and are not.
Yet some of my American friends (usually also of Russian or Ukrainian descent) immediately began asking me to help with their start-ups in a way that could be done for money without violating U.S. or Russian laws, given my status as a member of the Russian Parliament.
You read that right: even though I was now banished from my own country, I was still serving, from Silicon Valley, as an active and participating member of the State Duma.
I tried twice to get around the bailiff’s orders and return to Russia. In April 2015, the Kremlin responded with my arrest in absentia and filing for Interpol’s Red Notice, which is a request to law enforcement worldwide to locate and arrest you for pending extradition, surrender, or similar legal action. Thankfully, Russia’s request was immediately turned down by Interpol. In May 2016, they passed a special law—one in total violation of Russian Constitution—in the Duma (which somebody nicknamed the Ponomarev Act) to strip me of my parliamentarian status for not being physically present at plenary sessions. It came as no surprise that they wanted to kick me out of the Duma for not showing up, since they also forbade me from going back to Russia so that I could show up. It’s worth noting that they never asked the voters of Novosibirsk if they agreed with my removal as their deputy.
In June 2016, as soon as my powers as a Duma deputy were canceled according to the Ponomarev Act, I said, “Thank you, guys,” and finally created my own company in the United States. It was called Trident Acquisitions, an oil and gas investments business aimed at bringing international capital and technologies into Ukraine—and pulling out Gazprom’s poisoned teeth that sucked the blood out of the country and the whole European Union. In May 2018, we went public on NASDAQ, becoming the first publicly traded company from Ukraine in the United States.
It was under these stressful but exhilarating circumstances that I realized Putin’s main crime:
Putin has stolen from all Russians much more than money. He stole our future.
It became even more obvious to me after he started the war in Ukraine in 2014. The invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 looked like the nail in the coffin, with the sudden global repulsion toward anything, or anyone, that even remotely appeared to be Russian. In Ukraine, we had a lot of discussions about whether this “cancel Russian culture” campaign is justified and productive. However, the truth is that Putin has “canceled” far more Russian artists, writers, musicians, directors, and actors, than Europeans—or even Ukranians—have ever done.
But the Russians in Silicon Valley?
They know what it’s like to live in a system where there is no future, and this drives them to build their own damn futures, which they control, and which cannot be taken from them.
These futures must be returned home and invested in the creation of Russia without Putin; more precisely, Russia after Putin.
I felt this excitement and this value in a completely new way as I stood there breathing the thin and fragrant California Bay Area air. Suddenly, on that Palo Alto street corner, I experienced a touch of the very essence of true freedom for the very first time in my life. In that moment, I also became its most committed ambassador.
llya Ponomarev is a Russian politician, tech entrepreneur, and investor. A member of the Russian Parliament from 2007–2016, he chaired the Innovations and Venture Capital subcommittee, and became a leader of the Russian protest movement in 2011.
Gregg Stebben is the author of 20 books. In his career as a journalist he has interviewed hundreds of newsmakers and politicians including US Presidents Trump, Clinton, and George H. W. Bush, and Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev.