An opposition politician from St. Petersburg has sued Russian President Vladimir Putin for discrediting the army – for using the word “war” for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “He called the war war,” local MP Nikita Yuferev tweeted late Thursday evening. At the same time, thousands of people across the country had already been sentenced for it.
Officially, the war once morest Ukraine is only called “military special operation” in Russia. During an impromptu press conference in Yekaterinburg on Thursday, Putin declared: “Our goal is not to further turn the flywheel of the military conflict, but to end the war.”
It was the first time that the head of state had spoken of a war. Yuferev says he has lodged a complaint with Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev and Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov.
No chance of success
The lawsuit has no chance of legal success, because recently several propagandists close to the Kremlin had spoken of “war” without being prosecuted. The Russian judiciary has not even found a criminal offense in the demand by Anton Krassovsky, broadcast director at the Kremlin channel RT, that Ukrainian children be burned or drowned.
Yuferev, on the other hand, had to pay a fine in September for discrediting the army. Previously, together with other members of a district parliament in St. Petersburg, he had called on the Russian parliament, the State Duma, to charge Putin with high treason because of the war in Ukraine.
