“Otherwise we will lose the country”: Leontyev wants to deprive young people of voting rights

Rosneft press secretary Mikhail Leontyev believes that young people do not need voting rights, because “youth” is a disease. He stated this during his speech on the Vesti FM radio station. In his opinion, only people who do not know history well enough should have voting rights.

“We have reached such a level of knowledge of our history among the younger generation that we will be faced with the need to deprive young people of voting rights, probably in the near future. Because otherwise we will lose the country. Because these people don’t know anything, this is almost Ukraine – this is monstrous,” Leontyev said.

He does not consider this initiative a problem for society: “Young people do not need voting rights at all, because “youth” is a painful condition that goes away with age.”

On social networks, this proposal caused a large number of jokes and curses directed at Leontyev. Users ironically propose to “deprive girls of the right to vote until 60, boys until 65,” and also return compulsory conscription for 25 years.

“The ideal Russia of the Kremlin: only Putin, Sechin and his orderly, the always half-drunk pig Leontyev, have voting rights. And the rest are serfs assigned to the pipeline,” says opposition politician Alexei Navalny.

Earlier, speaking in the State Duma, LDPR leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky also paid special attention to the younger generation. He agrees with Leontiev’s opinion that young people will one day take power away from the country’s leadership, but his assessment of this prospect turned out to be more positive: “Now a generation has grown up that will not forgive you anything and will punish you all for what you are doing on our land, preventing us from living well, freely, joyfully. There are plenty of resources, plenty of people, but your hands, some of them, are dirty, and your thoughts are filthy.”