Russians who fled their country at the start of the war against Ukraine should be convicted of treason and sent to the mines. This is what Vyacheslav Volodin, the chairman of the Russian State Duma and a close ally of President Vladimir Putin, said.
If it were up to Volodin, Russians who fled the war would no longer have to return to their homeland. After all, the chairman of the Russian House of Commons considers them “traitors”. “If they want to return, but have made statements against the country and financed the Ukrainian armed forces, we must choose a place to send them immediately,” Volodin said in parliament.
“We may be talking about mines and areas where the weather is harsher, where there is no summer,” the Russian continued. Volodin was referring to the region around the eastern city of Magadan, infamous for the Gulag camps during the Soviet Union.
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“Lazy traitors”
The proposal was not well received by Sergei Nosov, the governor of Magadan. He emphasized that his city will not accept traitors. According to him, only “hard-working and patriotic Russians” live in Magadan. Volodin quickly reversed his statement and clarified that “the lazy traitors” should move to other, yet unidentified locations.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent mobilization caused hundreds of Russians to flee. But now Russia is encouraging certain experts – such as IT specialists – to return. In response, the Kremlin on Wednesday made a clear distinction between Russians with an anti-Russian mentality and other citizens. “The latter will always have their homeland, no matter what happens,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
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