Activists: Putin may remain in power until ‘natural end of life’

Russian President Vladimir Putin may remain in power until “the end of his natural life” or until he is overthrown, an anti-corruption campaigner has said. His comments came as Russians voted in a presidential election that is expected to extend Putin’s term for another six years.

Bill Browder, whose Hermitage Capital Management was one of Russia’s largest investors in the late 1990s and early 2000s, said the election was “a farce from top to bottom.”

But he said Putin, who is seeking another six-year term in office, was weak and that if he continued to crack down on Russians, pressure on him would increase and could eventually lead to an uprising.

“He has nothing to offer people other than death or prison. This is not a strong leader,” Browder told the outlet. Browder was expelled from Russia in 2005 after discovering some major corruption schemes at companies Hermitage had invested in. AFP news agency.

“If the Russian people decide on their own, without leadership, that enough is enough, you could end up with a Ceausescu situation,” he said, referring to Romania’s former communist leader Nicolae Ceau. Osescu. Overthrown in an anti-communist uprising in 1989, he was summarily tried and executed by firing squad.

Putin, a former KGB agent who has been president or prime minister since 1999, sees the election as a show of loyalty and support for his military offensive in Ukraine.

In a pre-election speech broadcast on state television on Thursday, he urged Russians to support him as the country faces “difficult times.”

fake election

“Putin has killed, imprisoned or exiled all of his opponents,” said Browder, who followed the death of his Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in prison in 2009 Led an international campaign to sanction Russian government officials.

“He put anyone who criticized him in jail, he controlled the television, he controlled the courts, he controlled everything.

“As a result, the whole thing is a farce from top to bottom. This is not an election, it’s a complete sham.”

The investor added that Putin is more like the late Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar than former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin.

He said Putin was more like a mafia boss who used the power of a sovereign state “to achieve all his criminal goals.”

“Stalin was a terrible, murderous dictator, but he did it for all kinds of ideological motives,” he said. “Putin, every one of his motives is a criminal motive.”

The financier said he believed Putin launched the war in Ukraine to “create patriotism” and “nationalist enthusiasm” but did not expect the conflict to last more than two years.

“This war is draining the Russian economy, it’s killing Russian soldiers, and that’s not good for him, so the only thing he can do is suppress, suppress, suppress; threaten, threaten, threaten; kill, kill, kill,” Browder said. .” Said in the interview.

Polling stations in the far eastern Kamchatka peninsula, which spans 11 time zones, opened at 8 a.m. on Friday, and polling stations in Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave between EU members Poland and Lithuania opened at 8 p.m. on Sunday. Click Close.