The leader of the communists in Russia warns that the country risks a new revolution. What he said about Vladimir Putin in parliament
Lawmaker Gennadi Ziuganov, the veteran leader of Russia's Communist Party, said economic problems risked a 1917-style revolution and urged the government to take urgent measures to remedy the situation.
Ghennadi Ziuganov issued the warning in the State Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, with parliamentary elections in September on the horizon, according to a speech published on the institution's official website.
Ziuganov was careful not to criticize the Russian president directly, instead directing his remarks at the government, the central bank and the ruling party.
“We are doing everything we can to support Putin and his strategies and policies, but you (the government, no) are not listening,” Ziuganov said in Tuesday's speech, which was received with applause by some lawmakers and was listened to attentively by Duma Speaker Viacheslav Volodin, a Putin confidant.
The leader of the Russian Communists said that a recent cabinet meeting called by Russian President Vladimir Putin was the darkest in recent memory.
“If you (the government) do not urgently adopt financial, economic and other measures, by the autumn we will have a repeat of what happened in 1917. We have no right to repeat this. Let's make some decisions,” urged Ghennadi Ziuganov, who alluded to the Bolshevik Revolution of more than a century ago.
His remarks, in which he also addressed the criticism recently launched by the Russian blogger Victoria Bonya regarding the situation in the country, however, distance Vladimir Putin from economic problems.
Putin, unhappy with the contracting economy
Russia's $3.1 trillion economy, which contracted in 2022 but grew in 2023, 2024 and 2025, beat most expectations and avoided a collapse despite sanctions imposed by the West as part of Moscow's war in Ukraine.
However, the pressure of war and double-digit interest rates slowed growth to 1% last year.
Putin last week reprimanded his top officials after the economy shrank 1.8 percent in the first two months of the year and asked them to come up with measures to boost growth.
Even so, according to Reuters, there are currently no signs of significant potential social turmoil in Russia, where censorship is tight in the context of war, protests are targeted by bans, dissidents receive heavy prison sentences, and the influence of the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has grown.
Zyuganov's party, the second-largest in parliament, is the main successor to the Soviet Communist Party, but supports Vladimir Putin and his policies, launching carefully calibrated criticism of the ruling United Russia formation.
