"When will the war end?": The video that could complicate things for the Russian politician
Bair Tsyrenov, a candidate for the Russian parliament from the Republic of Buryatia, published a video in which citizens ask politically explosive questions. He concludes the video with the slogan "Power to the people, peace in the world."
An obscure Russian politician from a remote and poverty-stricken region has managed to stir up a storm in Russia's political system by uploading a video in which questions are heard that the Kremlin might not be happy to hear.
Bair Tsyrenov, a candidate for the State Duma on behalf of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) in the single-mandate district of Buryatia and a member of the People's Khural of Buryatia, broadcast campaign videos on local television under the slogan "Power to the people, peace in the world."
In two of the videos, characters ask questions: "When will the special military operation end?", "Why block the internet?", "How can we live with such taxes?", "Why is everything getting more expensive?" and "Why do we need the recycling fee?". Tsyrenov appears at the end of the video and asks: "Why don't the authorities trust us?"
Tsyrenov said that the communists "tried to cram into 15 seconds all the thoughts and questions that people have today, because we also have the same questions." The Communist Party is an important partner of President Vladimir Putin, and its members rarely criticize his government's policies.
Other parties, whose members took a more critical line, received harsh institutional "treatment." The Yabloko party ran in the Duma elections under the anti-war slogan "For peace and freedom." The Supreme Court of Russia removed the party's federal list from the ballot in early August following a lawsuit by competitors, and regional courts subsequently began removing Yabloko candidates who planned to run in local parliamentary elections.
The Republic of Buryatia in Eastern Siberia is one of the poorest regions in Russia, and the region may have suffered the hardest price of the war in Ukraine. According to a count conducted by the Russian website "Mediazona," Buryatia recorded the largest number of deaths in the war in Ukraine in relative terms, thirty times more than other regions such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
