CHRONICLE OF RESISTANCE AND REPRESSION IN RUSSIA

“In order to bring the war in Ukraine to an immediate end, deputies must share responsibility with President Putin for the failure of the so-called ‘special military operation’ (SMO). More precisely, for the failure to achieve its declared goals over the past four years.
You may object: how can this be called a failure if the war is not yet over? In our view, the goals of the SMO have not been achieved to date—and, in fact, they are fundamentally unachievable.
Moreover, the continued prolongation of this hybrid war leads to the moral degradation of both the participants in the conflict and the nation as a whole. Propaganda-driven lies, death, and the daily killing of hundreds of citizens become routine. This destroys universal moral values and plunges society into legal chaos.
So who can decide today to end the war? President Putin, as head of state and commander-in-chief, and the State Duma of the Russian Federation. But Putin cannot make such a decision, nor can he resign under the present circumstances. In no country are commanders-in-chief who fail to win a war looked upon kindly, and their fate after the fighting ends is rarely enviable. Moreover, no one wants to go down in history as the president who lost a four-year war.
The deputies of the State Duma cannot make this decision independently either, because today they are entirely—so we believe—under the control of the presidential team.”
These words were spoken from the rostrum of the Samara Regional Duma by Grigory Yeremeyev, a 69-year-old deputy. He was the only speaker registered to address the chamber on behalf of non-parliamentary parties. Yeremeyev is a member of the Democratic Party of Russia and has spent his entire life in politics in Samara. He is known as a principled man, deeply concerned about the problems of his fellow citizens.
In his speech, Yeremeyev backed up his argument about the failure and destructiveness of the so-called SMO with concrete figures:
“One day of the SMO costs the state 100 billion rubles. A single tank costs 500 million rubles—that’s the equivalent of 100 apartments priced at five million each. An ‘Oreshnik’ missile costs 1.5 billion. Russia’s economy accounts for just 2 percent of global GDP, while NATO’s accounts for 50 percent. Any war is, ultimately, a war of economies.”
Yeremeyev proposed three concrete steps for the regional Duma:
to acknowledge responsibility for the failure of the SMO;
to apologize to residents of the region for the deterioration of their living standards;
and to propose to the president that military operations be halted within 10 to 30 days.
The funds thus freed, he suggested, should be distributed directly to citizens as resource rent for the use of natural resources—10,000 rubles per month for every resident.
“You, the deputies of the Samara Regional Duma,” Yeremeyev concluded, “paradoxical as it may sound at first glance, can in fact bring this war to an end within 10 to 30 days by adopting a single decision.”
As soon as the allotted speaking time expired, the chairwoman of the regional Duma rushed to cut Yeremeyev off and declared:
“I propose that this statement be forwarded to the investigative and supervisory authorities so they can assess its compliance with the law.”
That proposal appears to have been accepted. Immediately after the session, the recording of the meeting was removed from the Duma’s website. Yeremeyev was summoned for questioning by the regional “Center E”, the Interior Ministry unit tasked with combating so-called extremism. A few days later, a protocol was submitted to the Leninsky District Court in Samara under the article on “discrediting the army.”
Yeremeyev himself told journalists from the outlet 7×7 that the case concerns his statements about the “failure of the SMO” and his call to share responsibility with the president. Law enforcement authorities are reportedly preparing a second protocol, this time under the article on abuse of freedom of mass information.
For context, the first person in Russia to receive a prison sentence for anti-war statements was Moscow municipal deputy Alexey Gorinov, who was sentenced to seven years in prison for criticizing the war during a local council meeting in March 2022. In total, 1,181 people have been criminally convicted in Russia for anti-war statements (not counting administrative prosecutions, which number around 11,000).