More than 40 local councilors across Russia signed a two-sentence petition on Monday, which concluded with the following sentence:
The petition, pushed by those opposed to aggression in Ukraine, had no real impact and was completely ignored by Russian state media. But its very existence is impressive, and despite the Kremlin’s extraordinary crackdown on its opponents, the success of the Ukrainian counterattack has given President Vladimir V. person is looking to accuse someone else.
Pro-war commentators and politicians say military leaders and officials are either not decisively and capable enough to go to war, or not tell Putin all the facts. Longtime critics of the Russian government are using this discord and Russia’s setbacks on the front to risk speaking out against Putin.
“Now there is hope that Ukraine will end this war,” said Ksenia, a member of St. Petersburg’s city council who helped organize the petition and described Ukraine’s progress as an “exciting factor.” Torström said. He ‘decided it was necessary to apply pressure from all sides’
On Russian state television, where criticism of the Kremlin is rare, war proponents increasingly point their fingers at what they cast as a chaotic and poorly coordinated aggression. Others have raised the idea of sue for peace.With widespread outrage over the embarrassing withdrawal of Russian troops from more than a thousand square miles of northeastern Ukraine, one senior lawmaker said in an interview that he was calling for the war effort. He said an “urgent adjustment” was needed.
In a telephone interview on Monday, the MP, Konstantin F. Zatulin, a parliamentarian for Mr. Putin’s United Russia Party, revealed the stakes.
Zatulin described the withdrawal of Russian troops as “very serious damage to the very idea of this special military operation,” using the Kremlin’s adopted term for war. But he also cites the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 as examples of how criticism of the war effort from across the political spectrum could lead to unintended consequences if it spirals out of control. warned that there is
“I must stress that this criticism should not go too far,” he said. “Failure to do so may result in uncontrolled reactions.”
Zatulin said the optimism of those hoping to overthrow Putin was “very premature”. Ukraine’s success, he said, could cause the Kremlin to escalate its war effort to inflict a decisive defeat on Ukraine, but he did not expect this to mean “nuclear war.”
“What appears to be a success on the Ukrainian side now could actually lead to the last drop leading to the beginning of a real war,” Zatulin said. “Given that Russia has not truly reached its full potential, there is nothing left to do but demonstrate this power.”
There is no evidence that Putin’s power may be waning, and the Kremlin said on Monday that the invasion “will continue until the original objectives are achieved.”
Still, there are mounting signs that Russia’s elite are uneasy about the military withdrawal and unsure of how to proceed.
Duma member Mikhail Sheremet told the Russian press that the army would not succeed in Ukraine “without full mobilization”. This is an unspoken criticism of Putin’s refusal to draft a nationwide draft, a measure long demanded by Russians in favor of an escalating war effort.
Pro-Putin party leader Sergey Mironov. admired The strike against Ukraine’s infrastructure targeted Sunday night, leaving parts of the country without electricity, but complained that it “should have been carried out a few months ago.” rice field.
Discontent also continues on the social network Telegram, where pre-war Russian military bloggers have large followings. Yevgeny Podubny, a war correspondent for Russian state television, posted, “Stop whining,” referring to those worried about the escalating war.
But Andrei Klimov, a senior member of the Senate, tried to resist calls for all-out war, telling reporters that neither mobilization nor the declaration of martial law were “necessary.”
Mr Putin’s opponents are encouraged by the discord.
“A lot of people have hope that something will eventually collapse,” Ivan I. Krila, a historian at the European University in St. . “We’re probably wrong. It’s probably not the time yet, but everyone’s been waiting half a year for something to break, so this hope is very strong.”
After the February invasion, Mr. Putin led the strongest crackdown on dissidents since he took power two decades ago, signing censorship laws criticizing the war effort and calling it a “special military operation.” Called war instead — a potential crime. Thousands of journalists, activists and others have fled the country, forcing the closure of nearly all prominent independent news outlets still active in Russia. Key dissident figures who refused to flee were imprisoned.
So when a group of parliamentarians in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg issued a statement last week calling for the president to be removed from office on the grounds of treason, it was shocking in an environment driven by the fear of imprisonment. It was movement. Almost all of Putin’s criticism is underground.
While some of these city councilors are now fined for “discrediting” the military and government, another councilor in Moscow called for Mr Putin’s resignation. And over the weekend, the St. Petersburg delegation, Tolström, wrote to opposition-minded local lawmakers in a Telegram chat group: “I want to do something too.”
She said she was convinced to speak up both by colleagues who had already made anti-Putin statements and by the military advance of the Ukrainian army. She also referred to the misfortunes of the pro-Putin camp, which she said put the Kremlin in a particularly sensitive position.
Torström, 38, helped draft a petition issued on Monday calling on Putin to resign. She was careful not to mention war to avoid making any of the signatories vulnerable under laws that criminalize criticism of war. The petition said only that Mr Putin’s actions “harm the future of Russia and its citizens”.
When she published it on Twitter Monday morning, the petition had 19 signatures from Moscow and St. Petersburg. By the end of the day, the number had grown to more than her 40, including city representatives from the remote Siberian city of Yakutsk and Samara on the Volga River.
She admitted it was unclear how the petition would actually help expedite Mr Putin’s resignation. He said the aim was to send a message to the strong opponents of the squabble that they would win the support of the Russian people.
“Radical patriots are also beginning to question the correctness of the path being taken,” Mr. Horoshilov, 38, said in a telephone interview. “Some forces at the highest levels of power may take some kind of decisive action if they find support among the people.”
Putin’s core supporters seem to have focused on the idea that problems during the war were not his fault, but were misunderstood by senior officials and military leaders.
It was a message sent by Ramzan Kadyrov, the powerful ruler of the Chechnya region in southern Russia. He posted a rambling voice message on his Telegram account of himself last weekend, saying that if the military doesn’t change its “today or tomorrow” strategy, it will “seek explanations from the leaders of the Department of Defense and the leaders of the country.” will be forced to do so,” he warned. real situation on the ground. ”
Senior lawmaker Zatulin said many in Russia believed that “Putin was misinformed, didn’t know everything, and was deceived.”
“The president himself maintains power and is the basis of stability at this point,” Zatulin said.
But he warned, “It’s clear that any system has its limitations.”
Alina Lobzina When Ivan Necheplenko contributed to the report.
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