Ex-Gazprombank VP Igor Volobujev: 'Black Spark' must carry out sabotage inside Russia

Igor Volobujev, former vice president of Gazprombank, is the public face of a resistance movement called 'Black Spark' that has claimed responsibility for several sabotage operations inside Russia. In an interview with Postimees, he outlined the movement's goals, its relationship with the Russian Volunteers Corps, and his views on the opposition in exile. The group was founded to resist the current Russian regime and aims to dismantle what Volobujev describes as the empire.

Igor Volobujev, the former vice president of Gazprombank — one of Russia's most powerful financial institutions — has become the sole public face of a clandestine resistance movement known as 'Black Spark' ( ). In an interview with the Estonian newspaper Postimees, Volobujev spoke openly about the group's mission: to conduct sabotage and subversion operations inside Russia itself, with the ultimate goal of destroying what he calls the imperial system underpinning the Kremlin's rule.

What Is 'Black Spark'?

'Black Spark' was established as a direct response to the regime currently in power in Moscow. Unlike many anti-Kremlin initiatives that operate from the safety of Western capitals and content themselves with issuing statements or appearing on YouTube, this movement has already claimed responsibility for a series of covert sabotage operations on Russian soil. Volobujev did not detail the exact nature of all these actions, but made clear that the group views active disruption — not political commentary — as the only meaningful form of resistance.

Volobujev's background makes him an unusual figure in this space. As a senior executive at Gazprombank, he was deeply embedded in the financial infrastructure of the Russian state. His decision to break with that world and align himself with an underground resistance movement carries symbolic weight, signalling that disillusionment with Putin's system reaches into unexpected corners of the Russian elite.

Relations with the Russian Volunteers Corps

In the Postimees interview, Volobujev also addressed 'Black Spark's relationship with the Russian Volunteers Corps — a pro-Ukrainian armed group composed of Russian citizens fighting against the Kremlin on the side of Ukraine. He described the relationship as cooperative in spirit, though he drew a distinction between armed combat units operating from Ukrainian territory and a sabotage network functioning inside Russia itself. Both, he argued, are necessary components of a broader strategy aimed at collapsing the current Russian state.

Volobujev was notably critical of the exile opposition — the constellation of Russian political figures and activists based in Europe and elsewhere who present themselves as an alternative to Putin. He suggested that much of this emigrant political activity amounts to little more than posturing, and that real change in Russia will only come through concrete action on the ground, not from press conferences in Berlin or Prague.