Vladimir Putin’s regime is notoriously swift to arrest and/or jail protestors and dissenters. As such, it’s hard to believe that Putin wouldn’t have secretly weighed in on those local officials who recently moved to charge the Russian president with treason and have him booted from office. This took place in a district (Smolninskoye) near Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, and the accusations are all about Putin’s dismal Ukraine war, which has reaped immense loss of life on both sides and brought economic turmoil to the country that he leads.
As the Daily Beast reported earlier this week, the local lawmakers (led by Dmitry Palyuga) called out Putin’s war-making, which “is harming Russia’s security and its citizens.” They further scrutinized Putin’s “historical fantasies,” and it sure looks like the consequences are already coming down on these lawmakers for daring to push against a president who doesn’t take kindly to criticism.
As Newsweek now reports, law enforcement has now summoned Dimitri Palyuga (and fellow deputy Nikita Yurefev) for the offense of “discrediting” Putin’s government. Here’s Palyuga’s tweet on the subject:
Сам текст обращения pic.twitter.com/QrMoFkC9Xa
— Дмитрий Палюга (@dmitry_palyuga) September 7, 2022
And here’s Newsweek‘s lowdown:
The pair were ordered to make an appearance at a police station located on Mytninskaya Street in St. Petersburg at 9 a.m. local time on Friday, according to the messages.
They were informed that the purpose of the summons was to draw up a protocol on an administrative offense under a stringent new law that cracks down on dissent over the war against Ukraine.
This sounds rather intimidating, to say the very least, and there’s no telling when the situation will improve if people aren’t allowed to dissent or protest without fear of arrest. It’s no wonder that Russians are existing in huge numbers, all while Ukrainian people remain under siege in Putin’s quest to take hold of their country for over six months and counting.
(Via Newsweek)