Putin's communist opposition: if the war continues, then "everyone loses"

According to Gennady Zyuganov, chairman of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF), Russia will ultimately lose if the political course does not change and the war continues. The statement was made at the party's Sunday evening press conference, after the conclusion of the three-day parliamentary elections.

"If the course does not change, and this exhausting war continues, everyone loses. Without a turn to the center-left, without a turn toward justice, friendship and socialism, there is nothing with which to consolidate this victory"

– Zyuganov said, according to the Russian-language edition of The Moscow Times . The party leader also criticized the Kremlin's economic policy: he said the global economy grows by 3–4 percent annually, while Russia has shown roughly one percent growth for fifteen years. "In twenty years we haven't managed to make our own phone" – he said, referring to Russia's technological backwardness. He added that the price of basic foodstuffs needed for borscht rose by 40 percent in a single year. According to Zyuganov, the number of Russian oligarchs grew from 105 to 155 during the years of the war, and their combined wealth reached 700 billion dollars. "The oligarchy does not want to take part in the victory, does not want to pay proper taxes and invest," he said. The party campaigned with similar figures earlier this year as well: in April, Zyuganov said that the wealth of the richest 155 people, calculated in rubles, exceeds the revenues of the Russian federal budget by almost a third, while more than ten million people live below the subsistence minimum. The party leader also questioned the integrity of the election. He said that the tables spinning for hours on the election commission's displays "reflect no trend and no real picture whatsoever," and that in Voronezh all KPRF election observers were illegally removed.

Zyuganov's statement is notable also because the KPRF is part of the so-called systemic opposition: it criticizes the government's economic policy, but stands by the Kremlin on key issues. It was the party that initiated, in early 2022, the State Duma's request for Putin to recognize the "people's republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, which indeed happened a few days before the full-scale invasion. The current statement, too, is not anti-war in the Western sense: Zyuganov spoke of "consolidating the victory," attributing the failure to economic policy and the oligarchs. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian and independent Russian press assessed it as an unusually sharply worded statement, one that openly called the continuation of the war a risk, coming after the KPRF's weak election result. The only thing weaker than that could be the door handle of a ninth-floor window — God rest Zyuganov's soul, he really fell from a great height...

Madness