“It’s a signal to pro-war elites, no one is safe. For many, Putin is a lame duck”
“Obviously the Ukrainian government has nothing to do” with the assassination attempt on military blogger Vladlen Tatarsky. “It was the Russian partisans”, to be precise “a local group from St. Petersburg”. This was stated to Adnkronos by Ilya Ponomarev, a Russian politician in exile in Ukraine, according to whom the war “is coming to Russia”.
“I know the people who are behind the attack, but I can’t reveal anything. They are the ones who have to make a public statement and I don’t want to do anything against their will”, explains the former Duma deputy and billionaire, specifying that he has not never heard the name of Darya Trepova, the 26-year-old arrested because she was the main suspect in the attack. “I’ve never heard her name before. We don’t know each other, so I can’t say anything about it,” she says.
Ponomarev does not consider Tatarsky’s murder a signal to the leader of the Wagner Group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, as assumed by some observers. “It was a signal to the Russian elites in general that Putin is unable to protect anyone, that everyone is in danger and that if you support war, you better be careful,” says the exiled politician, underlining how Russia is “a country at war and a country at war, by definition, cannot be a safe place”.
The dissident then remarks that there are “many signs” that indicate “a continuous increase in internal instability in Russia” and that “the resistance is there and will grow. And it will obviously continue to put pressure on pro-war circles. It is not something civilians need to be afraid of, but war is coming to Russia nonetheless.”
Finally, Ponomarev believes that Putin is losing strength, is no longer clear-headed or able to lead Russia. “He is becoming increasingly weak, acts on many issues on impulse and does not seem like a person who has a coherent political or military strategy – he concludes – And while on the battlefield the Russian army cannot achieve any results, inside Russia More and more people are starting to see Putin as a lame duck, as a person incapable of leading the country.”
Source-www.adnkronos.com