“Significant event”: the appeal of the “patriot” Ivashov, who demanded Putin’s resignation due to the degradation of the country, was discussed in the Russian blogosphere

Blogs and social networks widely discuss the statements of the representative of patriotic circles – the leader of the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly (OOS) Leonid Ivashov. The retired colonel-general in his address “On the Eve of War” pointed out the absence of obvious threats to the Russian Federation on the “Ukrainian front”, criticized the Kremlin and called on the president to leave his post. What prompted the head of the veteran association to publicly oppose the Russian authorities was discussed in Runet.

According to political analyst Abbas Gallyamov, an unusual metamorphosis took place in Ivashov’s rhetoric against the backdrop of the concentration of the Russian military near the borders with Ukraine. “This is not Strelkov-Girkin for you (ex-Minister of Defense of the DPR, defendant in the case of the downed Boeing MH-17 in Donbass — Rosbalt), this is a symbolic figure for the “patriotic” camp, one might say. He was engaged in geopolitics and spoke out against the expansion of NATO to the East even when Putin did not even know such words. The fact that in his today’s statement Ivashov is practically indistinguishable from a liberal is an event, if not a landmark, then at least an outstanding one, ”the expert emphasized on Facebook.

The journalist Mikhail Shevelev is more critical of the head of the OOS. In his opinion, the Ivashovites, “who struck many minds demanding Putin’s resignation”, they offer the public “stale goods”, since the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly “already came up with this text exactly a year ago.”

“Only two things have changed. The organization ceased to be anonymous and acquired the face of General Ivashov. And the passage about the fact that everything that is happening is the result of a Zionist conspiracy has disappeared from the text,” Shevelev does not see a sensation in the sensational words of the leader of the OOS, Shevelev, pointing to the craving of the veterans’ meeting for conspiracy theories.

According to the journalist, the continuation of the story with the appeal of the retired general is “seen from afar”: “We need a new, decisive, tough line, focused on national interests. Either let Putin come to his senses, or let someone else take it. Patrushev (Head of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev – “Rosbalt”), For example”.

The former head of Yukos, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, after reading the Ivashov statement, wrote that he agreed with the calls “not to dehumanize Ukraine.”

“The general seems to be stressed out by what is stressing us all (he just understands better) that war games, even if there is no desire to unleash a war, can easily escalate into this very war,” Khodorkovsky’s post says. “After all, troops, people are not tin soldiers, they have their own feelings, nerves, problems, and by opposing two armed forces of more than 100 thousand people. on each side, expect trouble at any moment. And then – the logic of events … “

He continues by saying that “the war will eventually break this regime, which would be welcome if not for the lives of thousands of people. And maybe the whole of humanity … “

According to Ivashov and his associates, Putin’s resignation is necessary. According to the chairman of the OOS, the authorities cannot cope with the growing problems inside Russia and have set a course for escalation, concentrating troops to the border of Ukraine, with one goal – to stay at the helm.

“In our opinion, the country’s leadership, realizing that it is incapable of leading the country out of the systemic crisis, and this can lead to an uprising of the people and a change of power in the country, with the support of the oligarchy, corrupt officials, lured media and security officials, decided to activate the political line for the final the destruction of Russian statehood,” writes Ivashov. He explains that “war is the means that will solve this problem in order to retain for some time its anti-national power and preserve the wealth stolen from the people.”

He states that Kiev failed to remain a friendly neighbor for Russia through the fault of Moscow, and the development model and foreign policy mechanism of international cooperation that the Russian Federation demonstrates “repel almost all neighbors.”

Ivashov draws attention to the fact that “attempts through an ultimatum and threats to use force to force people to “love” Russia and those who govern it are not only senseless, but “extremely dangerous.”

Meanwhile, blogger Anatoly Nesmiyan connects the anti-war rhetoric of the author of the appeal to Putin with the fact that “the insane policy of the Kremlin, which drives the country into unpredictable and risky adventures, has got even these people.”

Nesmiyan recalls that the retired general “definitely cannot be called a dove of peace, he is a representative of a fairly wide range of latent nationalists (not in the political, but in the everyday sense of the word – that is, without fanaticism and flags, but mundane and community-based)”.

“And if Ivashov speaks approximately the same words with which the Tatu group came out on T-shirts (I mean anti-war appeals – “Rosbalt”), that says a lot. Nesmiyan draws an analogy with the events before the 1917 revolution, when “the same adventurous and mediocre policy of the last Tsar Nicholas II turned away the then nationalist Black Hundreds from him. And in fact, by the time of the February coup, Nikolai remained in a vacuum, having lost support from all sides.

Leonid Ivashov held senior positions in the USSR Ministry of Defense, in post-Soviet Russia from 1996 to 2001 he headed the Main Directorate for International Military Cooperation of the Ministry of Defense. Earlier, his organization demanded that the country’s leadership recognize the sending of private military specialists to Syria so that they could receive the privileges due to combatants. Read more in the Rosbalt article.