Local lawmakers in Russia who dared demand that Vladimir Putin be indicted for treason and removed from office were today called in for questioning by the police.
Under harsh regulations that criminalise criticism of the armed forces and the Russian government, the council members of the St. Petersburg neighbourhood of Smolninskoye may be subject to fines or even imprisonment.
They had griped that Putin’s conflict with Ukraine was killing or maiming young troops and bringing irreparable economic and political harm to Russia.
According to the lawmakers, they petitioned the Russian parliament to convict Putin of “high treason” and to remove him from office.
Nikita Yuferev, 34, one of those who received a police summons, said that he and six other council members had been instructed to come for interrogation.
Dmitry Palyuga, a 35-year-old councilman, said that Putin’s conflict “harms the security of Russia and its residents.”
In a special session, the council members who opposed the war insisted they had a quorum.
However, the leader of the Smolninskoye administration, Grigory Rankov, said today that the organisation engaged in unlawful activity by petitioning the state duma, the lowest chamber of the Russian parliament.
According to him, the request to indict Putin was a “provocation” and a “effort to discredit” the council.
Today, the council members went to the police station with a lawyer on their side.
What would be done to them was not immediately apparent.
We want to demonstrate to the public that there are [democracy lawmakers] who disagree with the current direction and believe Putin is hurting Russia, according to Palyuga.
We want to demonstrate to the public that we are not ashamed to discuss it.
Radislav Poluykov and Dmitry Baltrukov were two additional people who referred to Putin as a “traitor.”
Putin’s troops have lost a lot of soldiers and equipment since beginning their invasion of Ukraine six months ago, and they have essentially been fought to a stalemate while controlling around a fifth of the nation.
Russia’s capacity to fight is being undermined by precision attacks carried out by Ukrainian troops employing high-tech Western weaponry, and as its supplies of more contemporary equipment deplete, Moscow is reverting to antiquated weapons.
And on Friday, after the stunning collapse of a portion of Moscow’s front-line – created the most dramatic change in the war’s momentum since its early stages. Quickly moving Ukrainian soldiers were coming down on the key railway supporting Vladimir Putin’s forces in the east.
On the battlefields of eastern Ukraine yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reported “excellent news,” claiming that his troops had retaken several towns and villages from Russia as well as up to 385 square kilometres of land.
Palyuga told The Insider this week that one of the Russian president’s stated objectives was to demilitarise Ukraine, but that he and his fellow council members were being called in for questioning.
President Putin is endangering the security of the Russian Federation merely via his own speech, even if we do not entirely embrace the objectives he has stated.
We want to demonstrate to the public that [democratic representatives] do not support the current direction and believe that Putin is endangering Russia.
We want to demonstrate to the public that we are not ashamed to discuss it.
The local leaders are aware that the State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament that Putin’s henchmen control, would not grant their request.
They nonetheless went forward with the demand in spite of this. Yuferev said, “It is crucial to demonstrate that there are some who do not support the war.” We are in Russia, and there are a good deal of us, he remarked.
Out of the 20 council members present, 10 advocated for the treason demand against Putin, constituting a quorum.
Seven people voted in favour, while three people abstained.
A rare instance of outspoken opposition to the war can be seen in the councillors’ demand that Putin be charged with treason for his war in Ukraine.
Those who opposed Putin’s invasion frequently perished in enigmatic ways or faced a 15-year prison sentence.
The head of a Russian oil firm that supported Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was discovered dead last week under mysterious circumstances after jumping from a sixth-floor window at a Moscow hospital.
On September 1 at about 7.30 a.m. local time, Ravil Maganov, 67, the head of the Russian oil firm Lukoil, fell from a window on the sixth floor of the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow and perished instantly.
While law enforcement officials said there was no suicide note and no CCTV cameras on the part of the building where Maganov fell, Russian state media swiftly reported that his death was a suicide.
One of the few significant Russian businesses to call for a stop to hostilities in Ukraine when Moscow invaded was Lukoil, of which Maganov served as chairman.
The Lukoil board called for a “rapid” stop to the conflict in a statement released in the days after the invasion, offering their condolences to anyone impacted by the “tragedy”
Maganov was discovered dead after falling from the hospital window seven months later.
His death is the most recent of many high-ranking Russian officials who have passed away in unexplained ways recently, many of whom inexplicably fell out of windows.
Maganov is now one of many Russian oil tycoons who have died under questionable circumstances.
A 43-year-old former senior executive for the energy firm Lukoil, millionaire Alexander Subbotin was discovered dead in unexplained circumstances in May.
The oligarch, who ran a successful shipping business, allegedly had treatment with toad venom, which was injected into a skin incision.
Subbotin had a heart attack shortly after and was given a tranquilliser made of the valerian plant.