Russia issues arrest warrant for Putin’s former speechwriter

The Russian Interior Ministry announced this Friday a search warrant for Abbas Gallyamov, a political analyst and former speechwriter for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Gallyamov, who is in exile in Israel and was recognized by the Russian Ministry of Justice in February as a “foreign agent”, is thus included in the black list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, accused in an unspecified criminal case, the TASS news agency reported. .

The 50-year-old political scientist worked for the Russian president from 2008 to 2010, but left public service after the annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014.

Gallyamov got on this list of the Ministry of Internal Affairs a day after the release of an interview with Radio Free Europe, in which he spoke about his work as Putin’s speechwriter.

In the interview, Gallyamov explains Putin’s evolution from a logical man who felt no threat from the Russian opposition or NATO to an irrational man “very concerned with revealing power.”

“No one could have foreseen that Russia would become some kind of fascist state,” the political scientist admitted.

Gallyamov said he was very disappointed by a recent address to the nation in which Putin tried to “normalize the war” by confirming that he would call a presidential election in 2014 and run again.

He predicts that Putin will appoint Dmitry Medvedev as prime minister in the coming months, so that the latter will take the blame for a more than likely defeat on the Ukrainian battlefield.

“He doesn’t want to take responsibility for the defeat. He is a strong man. For him, being responsible for defeats is the worst thing imaginable. with my own eyes, in the eyes of my friends,” Gallyamov concluded.