St. Petersburg city deputy asks Prosecutor General to open a criminal case against Putin for saying the word ‘war’

Nikita Yuferev, a deputy of the St. Petersburg Smolninskoye Municipal District, asked Russia’s Prosecutor General and Ministry of Internal Affairs to open a criminal case against Vladimir Putin in connection with the law on spreading “fakes” about the Russian army.

Yuferev asked authorities to investigate Putin’s presentation at a December 21 press conference for the Kremlin press pool, during which the president said the word “war.” “Our aim is not to speed up the flywheel of this military conflict, but, on the contrary, to end this war, we’re trying to do that and we’re going to keep trying,” Putin said to journalists.

Yuferev posted on Twitter that “Vladimir Putin called the war a war.” He added that “there was no decree to end the SVO [the so-called ‘special military operation’], and war was never declared. Several thousand people have already been convicted for such words about war. I’ve asked the authorities look into Putin for spreading fakes about the army.”

In September, Yuferev was charged with “discrediting” the army after deputies from the Smolninskoye district called on the State Duma to bring treason charges against Vladimir Putin because of the war in Ukraine.