Russian opposition calls for protests against Putin’s ‘criminal war’

Russia’s opposition on Wednesday called for protests against President Vladimir Putin after he ordered the deployment of 300,000 reservists for what Kremlin foe Alexei Navalny said was a failed criminal war.

Putin ordered Russia’s first deployment since World War II and backed a plan to annex parts of Ukraine, warning the West that he was not bluffing when he said he would be ready to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia.

Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader currently in prison, said Putin was sending more Russians to their deaths for a failed war. “It is clear that the criminal war is getting worse, getting deeper, and Putin is trying to get as many people involved in this as possible,” he said in a video message from the prison recorded and posted by his lawyers.

“He wants to stain hundreds of thousands of people with this blood,” Navalny said.

Since the February 24 invasion, Putin has clamped down on dissent and the media, with thousands arrested in anti-war protests and a new law that provides for 15-year prison terms for anyone distributing “fake news” about the military.

Russian state television presents critics as traitors in the pay of the West. Putin says the country is in a battle with the West over Ukraine, which he says is being used by the United States and its allies in an attempt to destroy Russia.

Russia’s anti-war groups have called street protests against the mobilization order.

“This means that thousands of Russian men – our fathers, brothers and husbands – will be thrown into the meat grinder of war,” said the anti-war coalition Vesna. “Now the war has reached every home and every family.” He urged Russians to take to the streets in major cities on Wednesday.

In the days after the start of the war, riot police cracked down on nightly street protests that detained at least 16,000 protesters, according to rights group OVD-Info.