A Russian governor is in trouble for saying something that made people angry. She said that Russia’s army didn’t need to be in Ukraine.
Natalya Komarova, who serves under President Vladimir Putin’s governing United Russia party as the governor of the Khanty-Mansiysk region made the remarks during a meeting with residents in the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk on Saturday..
Some people want the authorities to check what she said, but she hasn’t been arrested or charged with anything. There’s a video of her talking to people in a Siberian city called Nizhnevartovsk.
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In the video, a woman whose husband is a Russian soldier tells Komarova that the soldiers going to Ukraine don’t have good equipment.
Komarova explained that Russia wasn’t ready for this war. She also said, “Are you asking me (why your husband does not have equipment), knowing that I’m the governor and not the minister of defense?”, the 67-year-old said.
“As a whole, we did not prepare for this war. We don’t need it. We were building a completely different world, so in this regard, there will certainly be some inconsistencies and unresolved issues,” she said.
Her words spread on the internet, and some people who support the war said she was hurting Russia’s military.
A news outlet called Sibir.Realii said they saw a letter from a man named Yuri Ryabtsev, who runs a non-profit group in Siberia. He wrote to Russia’s Minister of Internal Affairs and asked for an investigation into what Komarova said.
Days after Putin sent troops into Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Russia’s Kremlin-controlled parliament approved legislation that outlawed disparaging the military and the spread of “false information” about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
Russian courts have used the legislation to hand out fines and prison terms to opposition critics, including those who describe Moscow’s full-invasion of Ukraine as a war, instead of using the Kremlin’s preferred euphemism of “special military operation.”
