Zhoga for the sake

Putin again goes to the elections on the "requests of citizens." For the fifth term, he was “nominated” by the military from the “DPR”. Who is he?

On December 8, Vladimir Putin announced plans to nominate a candidate for the fifth term. It looked like this: the president presented the Golden Star medals to the heroes of Russia, and after the ceremony, the commander of the Sparta battalion and the speaker of the annexed “DPR” Artyom Zhoga approached him and suggested running for the 2024 elections. Then Gossmi distributed a video.

“I am in the person of our whole people, all of Donbass, our reunited lands, I would like to ask you to take part in these elections, because there are a lot of work. Thanks to your actions, your decisions, we received freedom and the right to choose. [...] You are our president. You are our president, we are your team. We need you, Russia needs you, ”said Zhoga Putin.

He was barely audible for journalists: “Thank you very much. I will not hide: at different times I had different thoughts. But now you are right, now is the time when you need to make decisions. I will run for the position of president. ”

Joga later told the state media that at the front "everyone was worried and wondered if Putin would run for Putin." He also emphasized that he confidently answered the question: “Our president makes decisions without hesitation, he is always confident in his actions, in his decisions, in his words.” In addition, the military said that if he is offered to become a confidant of the President of the Russian Federation, he will agree.

“To the question of whether he understands that he went down in history and that he will now begin a new life, Zhoga said that he was already used to starting his life from the beginning,” writes RIA Novosti.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the conversation of Zhogi and Putin about the elections was not prepared in advance. Novyevropa tells who “asked” the head of state to nominate his candidacy and how Putin explains his decisions “requests of the working people”.

Zhoga in the war

Zhoga was born in 1975 in the Donetsk region. When his son Vladimir was born, he and his family moved to Slavyansk. After the start of the war in 2014, the father and son joined the separatist forces.

In 2014, Artem and Vladimir Zhoga joined the Sparta reconnaissance battalion, formed in Donetsk. The battalion participated in the battles against the Ukrainian military in Slavyansk as part of the battalion Igor Strelkov (Girkin), in the capture of the Donetsk airport, in battles in Debaltseve, Ilovaysk.

Arsen Pavlov, known as Motorola, headed Sparta. In October 2016, Pavlov died in Donetsk: he was blown up in the elevator of his house. The head of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko, accused the Ukrainian side of murder. The former speaker of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Artem Shevchenko then wrote about the death of Motorola on Facebook, saying that he could be killed "his own accomplices."

After that, the commander of the Sparta was Vladimir Zhoga (with the call sign of Voha), who previously consisted in the Slavic self -defense units. Then, for several months, the fighters in the city were led by Igor Girkin (Strelkov), who in July 2023 was arrested in the case of calls for extremist activities because of the posts in Telegraph, which referred to the preparation for the surrender of Crimea and that the families of mobilized soldiers of 105 and 107 landing regiments do not pay .

On March 5, 2022, 28-year-old Vladimir Zhoga died during the battles in Volnovakha, and his father was taken by his father. On May 9 of that year, Putin met with Artem Joga and handed him the star of the Hero of Russia, who posthumously awarded his son.

Joga thanked the president and said:

“This award - Volodya deserved it with all his actions. [...] He gave himself to this matter: it was affected that I was growing and brought up at a time when we honored our heroes, the memory of our grandfathers. My grandfather, a participant in the Great Patriotic War, a veteran, ended the war in Koenigsberg, he was a senior sergeant, was an artillery intelligence officer. Volodya, it turned out, also became a scout, not an artillery, but a military intelligence officer, a battalion commander.

We will make maximum efforts in order to bring our business to the end so that the victory is behind us. ”

After the death of Vladimir Zhogi in several Russian regions, they announced the renaming of the streets in honor of the military. In memory of him, they plan to name the streets in Magadan , Kaluga , Khabarovsk , Vologda and Penza . In Maykop, Omsk and Volzhsky near Volgograd, the streets of the Joga were already awarded the streets.

Zhoga in politics

In 2023, Artem Zhoga joined the United Russia party, on behalf of which, for example, he tells how life in the “DPR” became better after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “Our task is to free our land from Nazi people!”, ”He said during the Miting concert in Luzhniki, dedicated to the“ accession ”of Crimea to the Russian Federation.

The Jogu is included in different organizations under the president, in particular, together with the secretary of the party council of the party Andrei Turchak, he is part of the Supervisory Board of the State Fund “Defenders of the Fatherland”. In September, he was elected chairman of the People’s Council of the DPR-the parliament of the self-proclaimed republic, and the United Russia put forward it to the post.

In November, Kommersant wrote that the Kremlin discusses the composition of the Putin nomination group to the polls. According to the publication, the Joga, as well as the SHAMAN (Yaroslav Dronov), director Nikita Mikhalkov, State Duma deputy Valentina Tereshkova, and the head of the National Medical Chamber Leonid Roshal, was supposed to enter the publication. At the time of publication of this material, the creation of such initiative groups has not yet been announced.

Zhoga and Putin

The military is the logical choice of the interlocutor for Putin to announce the nomination at the end of the second year of a full -scale invasion of Ukraine, the political analyst Fedor Krasheninnikov explains in a conversation with the New Gazeta Europe.

“It would be strange if he had advanced during the war at the request of collective farmers, milkmaids, workers or steelmits,” the expert says. - Therefore, I think that he was offered all the options [with whom to talk about nomination], but, obviously, he chose a military version. Moreover, there is a version that, perhaps, all this was a little impromptu - that this very Zhoga “in joy” was shaken by what he was told. But it does not matter.

The fact that Putin would participate in the elections was clear from the very beginning. And the fact that he will not furnish his nomination with any complex ceremony is also in the traditions of his nomination. Because everyday life is important for Putin. He is not [US President] Joe Biden, not some [French President Emmanuel] Macron to make a show out of his nomination. He will win the elections, he already leads Russia, so it is important to show that the elections are happening between the matter: between the matter has been advanced, the campaign will pass between the matter, it will be declared the winner in the other place.

All other officials joyfully began to shout down slogans, that is, in any case, it is obvious that for no one this surprise and surprise. In their narrative, the Donbass is part of Russia, and this ass is such a [typical] Russian military who asked for his Russian president to nominate, and Putin "could not refuse him."

"At the request of the workers"

To do something “exclusively at the request of citizens” is Putin’s constant tactics.

In January 2000, he announced his readiness to go to his first elections during the mantle and diploma ceremony of the Honorary Doctor of the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg State University. Putin said that only on the eve he learned about the creation of an initiative group in Moscow on his nomination and in this solemn setting decided to accept the “proposal”.

In September 2011, the “Cremiste” occurred in the Congress of United Russia: Dmitry Medvedev, who replaced Putin for four years at the president’s post, proposed to nominate him-at that time the prime minister. And he himself headed the list of the party in the elections to the State Duma. Putin called it “a great honor” for himself, Medvedev said that the decision was made jointly.

In 2017, Putin again announced the nomination "at the request of the workers." At a rally-concert dedicated to the 85th anniversary of the Gorky Automobile Plant, the employee of the enterprise said:

“Today, in this room, everyone supports you without exception. Vladimir Vladimirovich, make us a gift, announce your decision, because we are for you, gas - for you. ”

The President then replied that he would put forward a candidate in the 2018 election, and noted that "there probably is probably no better place and a better reason for announcing this."

In 2020, during the discussion of constitutional amendments, State Duma deputy Valentin Tereshkova proposed “resetting” restrictions on presidential terms. The amendment, together with the new constitution, adopted that Putin gave Putin the right to go to the polls this year - for the third time in a row (and for the fifth in total).

In 2023, the president’s voting will be held for the first time for three days, from March 15 to 17. Former State Duma deputy Boris Nadezhdin, journalist Ekaterina Duntsova and the arrested former “Minister of Defense” “DPR” Igor Strelkov (Girkin), stated the intention to participate in the elections as self -nominated elections.