Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Gabriel Gatehouse.

Ilya Panamariov has been many things. Once a member of the Duma, the lower house of the Russian

parliament, he studied physics, went on to be a successful tech entrepreneur in between stints

working for an oil company and the Russian government. Once close to Vladislav Sarkoff, the man dubbed the author of Putinism.

These days, he's a political exile living in his adopted country, Ukraine, a country that is now at war with the country of his birth, Russia.

So, what will be the repercussions of this war, Ukraine and in Russia on the streets and in the Kremlin?

Ilya Panamareov in Kiev, welcome to Hard Talk.

Hello, Gavril. Thanks. Thanks for having me here again.

You're a political exile now, a Russian in Ukraine dressed in khaki.

You said recently, I chose Ukraine because it's the best place to bring down Vladimir Putin's regime.

You've joined Ukraine's territorial defense forces.

What is your role in this?

Are you picking up a gun or what?

I want to stress that I'm not fighting against Russia, I'm fighting against Putin and against

Putinism. That's very much the same as anti-fascists during World War II who were joining

British, Norwegian and Soviet forces. They also were fighting against fascism. They were not fighting against their motherland because they became to hate Germans.

No, they hated fascists.

And that's very much the same what we are doing here.

In territorial defense, yeah, that's like volunteers who are armed and for fighting against the aggression

protecting the cities.

And these volunteers, they usually have Kalashnikovs or machine guns, sometimes slightly more

heavier hardware, and some of those units have attack missiles as well.

...