His replacement Vladimir Putin asked … a fearless Russian politician speaking on the “air” of state television!

It is the first time someone has directly called for Putin’s replacement as president on a televised broadcast since the start of the war in Ukraine (“for the Russians a special military operation”) in 2022.

The politician close to the opposition Boris Nadezhdin, who has criticized the Russian invasion of Ukraine, told Russian channel NTV that Russians should choose a different leader in the country’s elections in 2024. “With the current political regime there is no way for us to return to Europe… We must let’s choose someone else, and not Putin,” Nadezhdin stated bluntly. “Then everything will be fine.”

“We just have to choose different authorities to rule the country that would stop this story with Ukraine,” he told NTV, one of the three main state channels in Russia.

He noted that a different government would allow Russia to “build relations” with European countries and “everything will fall back into place.” Embarrassed, host Ivan Traskin, a Putin propagandist, quickly tried to cut Nadezhdin off by snapping back: “Boris Nadezhdin, you are predictable … I expected you to say all this, word for word, you are boring.” But undeterred, Nadezhdin continued to criticize Putin.