General Vlasov's fatal mistake

Already in the first months after the attack on the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, individuals and groups of USSR citizens offered cooperation to the advancing German troops. The Germans were welcomed as their liberators, especially by members of non-Russian nationalities, but also by the Russians themselves.
However, there was no personality who could concentrate the army fighting alongside the Germans against the Bolshevik regime in Russia. This role was taken over by Lieutenant General Andrei Andreevich Vlasov (1900-1946), captured on the Volkhov front in July 1942. Until recently a successful Red Army commander, he toured the prison camps looking for and finding soldiers willing to join the Russian Liberation Army. The "Vlasovites", together with Himmler's Waffen-SS, fought a losing war in the spring of 1945. Like their commander, they made the fatal mistake of failing to find a way to the anti-Hitler powers who were seeking the victory of democracy. They played quite a significant role in the fighting of the Prague Uprising, but by that time it was already too late... For the Red Army command and for the political leadership of the Soviet state (but also in the perception of most of their compatriots) the taste of betrayal remained on the members of the Russian Liberation Army.