Dozens of municipal deputies from Moscow and St. Petersburg called on President Vladimir Putin to resign in an open letter published on Monday.
The call for the Russian president to step down comes amid allegations of vote-rigging in local and regional elections this weekend, as well as a massive offensive by Kiev’s forces that marked the biggest setback for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Its signatories also put themselves at risk of being punished under laws passed shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine that ban virtually all anti-war dissent.
“President Putin’s actions harm the future of Russia and its citizens,” the petition reads. general on Twitter Ksenia Torstrem, deputy of the Semenau district of St. Petersburg.
“We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of President of the Russian Federation,” says the statement, which was initially signed by 19 deputies.
According to Torström, another 84 people signed the petition on Monday.
“Another 84 signatures have arrived, now we will check them,” Torström wrote.
Independent monitoring agency “Voice”. informed dozens of cases of ballot-stuffing, intimidation, vote-buying and incorrect vote counting after pro-Kremlin candidates swept the field in local and regional elections in Russia.
Meanwhile, during the Ukrainian counter-offensive in the north-east of the Kharkiv region, Kiev troops returned about 3,000 square kilometers of territory previously occupied by Moscow.
MPs’ calls for Putin to resign initially surfaced last week after Dmitriy Palyuga, an MP for St Petersburg’s Smolninsk district, called on the State Duma to try the president on charges of treason over his invasion of Ukraine.
Palyuga was summoned to the police station, possibly accused of “discrediting” the Russian army, but later released.
