Aleksandr Lunin, a former Russian frontline soldier, released a video on June 25 titled “Message to V.V. Putin.” In it, he demands that the Kremlin chief grant him a live broadcast audience in a timely manner. Otherwise, he will “tell the full truth about what is happening in our country,” Lunin said. He speaks of dozens, hundreds, thousands of soldiers who are under arrest in the army, tortured and punished for refusing to follow “stupid, suicidal orders.” Should he not be invited to the Kremlin, Lunin threatens: “Then the army will turn its weapons against the Kremlin.”
The video spread rapidly: within a very short time, it was viewed about ten million times and received hundreds of thousands of likes, mainly via Telegram, where Lunin has more than 12,000 subscribers. The ex-soldier emphasizes that he is acting on behalf of the people, “the honest people in Russia.” Whether his call is backed by a group of like-minded individuals or organized government critics is unclear.
Instead of an invitation to the Kremlin, the police raided Lunin’s home in the village of Lisinovka in the Voronezh region. His wife Tatyana reported in a video that officers confiscated all electronic devices and storage media. Lunin himself was not present at the time – he had traveled to Moscow with an acquaintance. A close acquaintance later shared via Telegram that Lunin was alive and well but had been taken into custody for eleven days.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reacted to the demand for an audience: “One must first take a look at it,” he said cautiously. The call recalls the uprising of the Wagner mercenary group around Yevgeny Prigozhin in June 2023, which ended with an armed march on Moscow and fizzled out after Prigozhin’s death in August 2023.
Source: www.spiegel.de
