Local representatives in the Russian Federation are calling for Putin's resignation

After local elections in Russia, local representatives of 18 districts of Moscow and St. Petersburg issued a press release demanding the resignation of Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Monday, September 12, the appeal was announced on Twitter by Ksenija Torstrem, deputy of the "Semenivskij" municipal district of St. Petersburg. She invited other local representatives to join the statement.

Similar statements by local representatives began to appear in Russia a week earlier. On September 7, the Smolninsk Municipal Council in the center of St. Petersburg voted to send an appeal to its representatives in the State Duma of the Russian Federation calling for the removal of Russian President Vladimir Putin from office, for treason related to the Russian Federation's military action against Ukraine.

DW spoke with the author of this initiative, Dmitr Paljuga, and one of the local representatives who supported it, Nikita Juferev, why they took this step and what kind of reaction they expect. The conversation was held even before both were called to the police for allegedly "discrediting" the Russian army.

History of the appeal of local representatives of St. Petersburg to the State Duma

According to Nikita Juferev, who has been an MP since 2019, he and his colleagues "thought they were protesting" appeared a long time ago, namely on February 24, 2022. Together with another representative of the same local council in St. Petersburg - Dmitri Baltrukov - and representatives from various political movements from other municipalities, Juferev submitted a request to hold a rally on February 24 "under the slogan that was still allowed at the time": "No war : for peace, for peace with Ukraine and political stability". However, the city government did not agree to the meeting.

Juferev and his colleagues invited all residents of St. Petersburg to an open meeting of the Smolnyansk Municipality Council on March 2.

"A lot of people came. The police came. There were a lot of helmets, a lot of car bags, but it was calm," the representative recalled in an interview with DW. "We agreed with the appeal to President Putin to end the special operation and we parted ways ".

The petition was sent to the Kremlin, but its signatories did not receive a response, says Juferev. In August, he sent another message to the President of the Russian Federation - this time in person - calling for an end to the war for humanitarian reasons:

"After all, millions of Ukrainians became refugees, more than 5,000 civilians, according to UN data at the time, died, including about 300 children".

This time the answer came. It states that the appeal has been considered and that Russia is carrying out a "special military operation of demilitarization and denazification," according to Juferev.

 

"The President's activities do not correspond to Russia's interests"

 

On September 7, his fellow deputy Dmitro Paljuga submitted a draft appeal to the State Duma calling for the removal of the president from office for treason.

Sam Paljuga and his colleague Nikita Juferev in an interview with DW emphasize that, when addressing the State Duma, they acted in accordance with legal regulations and used only legally prescribed procedures.

"Until now, there has been no precedent for someone to be sentenced for submitting a request to a state body. In addition, Russian legislation expressly forbids it," notes Paljuga.

According to him, the decision to prepare an appeal to the representatives of the State Duma was not spontaneous. The idea itself came to his mind when he began to notice that even in the so-called patriotic Russian public and on Telegram channels, whose users traditionally support the government's course, statements began to appear that "the activities of the president of the Russian Federation do not correspond to the interests of Russia."

 

"Signs of betrayal in Putin's actions"

 

Paljuga and Juferev published a copy of the appeal to the State Duma of the Russian Federation on their Twitter pages. According to the author of the complaint, the actions of Russian President Putin contain signs of the crime provided for in the article of the Russian Constitution on treason. Namely, they pay attention to four points.

Specifically, it is about the destruction of combat-ready units of the Russian army, the death and maiming of young and able-bodied citizens of the Russian Federation, damage to the Russian economy, the probable expansion of NATO after the start of the war in Ukraine, as well as the equipping of the Ukrainian army with modern Western equipment, which is in itself contrary to the goal of "demilitarization" of the neighboring country.

"Actually, we do not consider rapprochement with NATO as a direct threat to Russia, but we try to appeal to different audiences with different arguments to convince them that it is necessary to finish this work," explains Yuferev.

According to him, 10 of the 20 members of his local council, including the chairman of the pro-government United Russia party, were absent from the September 7 appeal vote. However, according to Russian law, ten deputies were enough for a full quorum and making legitimate decisions. As a result, seven present voted to send the appeal to the State Duma.

 

"An appeal to the Russians who are against what is happening"

 

Answering DW's question what kind of reaction he and his colleagues expect to their complaint, Nikita Juferev points out:

"All our appeals, despite the presence of important and significant addressees, were not addressed to them. We understand that most likely they will not give us an answer or the answer will be somehow painful, as was the case with my August letter: it is rather an appeal to the Russians who are here in Russia and who are equally worried about what is happening. We are trying to show them that they are not alone, that we are also there, that there are many of us - people who are against what is happening, it is not "a small number of traitors", as the propaganda says. There are many of us."

 

Dmitro Paljuga has a similar attitude: "We did this mainly to show other people who disagree with what is happening in the country, that there are representatives who also disagree. And these MPs are ready to talk about it loudly".

 

Commenting on the fate of Moscow local representative Alexei Horinov, who was found guilty in July of "spreading false information" about the Russian army and sentenced to seven years in prison, the politician from St. Petersburg says:

"Of course, we understand that we are taking the risk, but we have estimated that it will be right now."

Nikita Juferev reacts similarly to this question:

"If they want to judge, then, of course, they will. But what can we do - keep quiet?" Juferev is sure that, as he said, militarists are not the majority of the population of Russia.

"We were all raised by the generations that passed the Second World War, what was the main saying of our grandparents? That there is no war. Yes, they called it all "special military operation" now. But people are starting to understand what it really is, what is happening there, how many are dead. We have a very peaceful people and I think that what is happening will be rejected very quickly by the people living in Russia."