AsVladimir Putin has charged ahead in his relentless pursuit of Ukraine, many people have developed a fear and hatred towards Russia– even some Kremlin officials, it seems.
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According to The Daily Beast cited in Alternet, municipal deputiesin St. Petersburg have urged the State Duma to put Putin on trial for treason. A day later, Moscow officials agreed, asking him to step down. Now, the peacemakers’ fates remain in question.
An open letter to Putin
In Moscow’s open letter to the Russian leader, deputies asserted that his ‘good reforms’ have gone hopelessly ‘wrong’. They wrote:
The rhetoric that you and your subordinates use has been riddled with intolerance and aggression for a long time, which in the end effectively threw our country back into the Cold War era. Russia has again begun to be feared and hated, we are once again threatening the whole world with nuclear weapons…We ask you to relieve yourself of your post due to the fact that your views and your governance model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential.
While the war in Ukraine was not referred to explicitly, Putin’s ways don’t seem to be sitting well with the letter’s authors. And, the authors’ letter is not sitting well with the Russian legal authorities.
Death by poison
A Washington Post article cited in Business Insider reported that the Moscow deputies are being charged by police ‘due to actions discrediting the current Russian government’
In fact, Putin instated a law shortly after waging the war in Ukraine, which made it illegal to nay-say the Russian military – or else face up to 15 years behind bars.
Being locked up in some of the world’s toughest prisons isn’t the only risk, though. One of Putin’s biggest enemies survived being poisoned by a deadly, Soviet-era chemical called Novichok after challenging his authority. The victim, Alexey Navalny, was sentenced to prison shortly after and remains incarcerated to this day.
While the open letter may be enough to persuade Putin to give up his political crusade, it goes to show that even Putin’s own are questioning his intentions.
Read more:
⋙ Russia’s anti-Putin ‘National Republican Army’: What is it and does it really exist?
⋙ Vladimir Putin critic Alexei Gorinov begs for help from prison amid ‘fear for his life’
