1) You seem fascinated with history and ordered a new official history curriculum for Russia’s schoolchildren. Why then are credible Russian historians like chronicler of the Stalin-era Yuri Dmitriev being jailed, on what the EU says are trumped-up charges? Russian historian Anatoly Razumov, who has also been laboring for decades to identify those murdered by Stalin’s executioners, says your authorities have turned the clock back to the Communist era and are weaponizing history. Isn’t it the case you are rewriting history for political purposes?
2) Why won’t you allow serious and credible candidates to run against you in elections? Opposition figures and outspoken critics seem to have a nasty habit of being murdered, like Boris Nemtsov, who was shot several times near Red Square, or being poisoned and ending up in jail like Alexei Navalny. At the very least this is an unfortunate pattern that suggests you have no control and at worst it suggests all of this is orchestrated. Are you responsible for these murders, near-deaths and jailings?
3) Were you surprised when your old St. Petersburg friend Wagner mercenary boss Yevgeny Prigozhin turned against you? You said after the plane crash he was killed in that he “made serious mistakes in his life.” What were those mistakes and was the biggest criticizing you and your generals for the conduct of the war against Ukraine? Did you order his death?
4) Hundreds of Russian journalists have been forced into exile to keep reporting about your war against Ukraine. Isn’t it the case you can’t tolerate an independent media?
5) You are proud of Russia’s new hypersonic missile, but it has also been plagued by several deaths and arrests of scientists involved in the program. In fact, at least a dozen scientists have been detained and three have died in odd circumstances. How do you explain that?
6) In 2014, you denied you had anything to do with the armed masked men who suddenly appeared in Crimea — nicknamed by the Western media “little green men.” Later you insisted there was no pre-planned Russian intervention — it was all spontaneous. Subsequently you admitted that Russian special forces were involved in the events leading up to the illegal annexation of Crimea. On the eve of the February 2022 invasion, the Kremlin and your foreign minister denied Russia had any plans or intention to invade. In April 2022 you said that images and footage of dead bodies strewn across the Ukrainian town of Bucha were fake and denied Russian soldiers committed any atrocities in the town north of Kyiv despite documentary evidence to the contrary. With that track record, why should anyone believe anything you say now?