Russian city council votes to revoke mandate of lawmaker who condemned war and called Putin a monster

Municipal lawmakers in the Russian city of Perm unanimously voted on Tuesday to revoke the mandate of their colleague Sergey Medvedev, who spoke out against Putin and the invasion of Ukraine earlier this month, according to local media.

“A person who doesn’t support the ideology of our state cannot be a deputy. Today, it’s more important than ever that we be unified and focus on achieving the goals set by our country’s leaders,” Perm City Duma speaker Dmitry Malyutin said at the meeting where the vote was taken.

On December 31, Sergey Medvedev published a post on social media that condemned the full-scale invasion of Ukraine as a “bloody massacre” and called for the “punishment” of “all those responsible for hundreds of thousands of ruined lives”:

Screenshots of the post appeared on pro-Kremlin Telegram channels on January 11. Two days later, Medvedev was reportedly expelled from the Communist Party.

On January 13, Medvedev flew to Kazakhstan and then to Georgia. On January 15, regional media outlets reported that the Russian authorities had issued an international warrant for his arrest.