Abbas Gallyamov wrote speeches for Vladimir Putin during the Russian leader’s tenure as prime minister from 2008 to 2012.
Police in Russia have put a former speechwriter for President Vladimir Putin on a wanted list of criminal suspects for his comments on the war in Ukraine, the latest step in Moscow’s sweeping crackdown on dissent.
Abbas Gallyamov wrote speeches for Putin during the Russian leader’s tenure as prime minister from 2008 to 2012. Gallyamov, 50, later became an outspoken political adviser and analyst, frequently quoted by Russian and foreign media. He has lived abroad in recent years.
On Friday, Russian and international news agencies discovered that Gallyamov was listed in the Interior Ministry’s database. The entry said he was wanted “in relation to an article of the Criminal Code” but did not include the law he was accused of breaking.
Russia’s Justice Ministry last month added Gallyamov to its register of foreign agents, a designation that carries additional state scrutiny and carries heavily pejorative connotations designed to undermine the recipient’s credibility.
The ministry said Gallyamov “distributed material created by foreign agents to an unlimited circle of people, spoke out against the special military operation in Ukraine, and participated as an expert and interviewee on information platforms provided by foreign structures.”
Russia’s Interior Ministry has placed Abbas Gallyamov, a former Putin speechwriter and political scientist now living outside Russia, on the federal wanted list. https://t.co/EJmpR2BdG3
— Meduza in English (@meduza_en) March 24, 2023
Gallyamov had recently given an interview predicting that an uprising in Russia over its war in Ukraine was a possibility, and reflecting on his time as Putin’s speechwriter, he said few could have predicted “that Russia would turn in would turn into a kind of fascist state as it is now”.
Gallyamov told the Associated Press on Friday that he learned from the media that he was on a wanted list. No law enforcement agency has contacted him, so he doesn’t know what charges he faces in Russia.
“I assume that formally it is the offense to discredit the army,” Gallyamov said in a telephone interview.
“It will be used against anyone who refuses to expand the Kremlin’s playbook and attempts to conduct an objective, impartial analysis of what is going on,” he said.
Discrediting the Russian armed forces became a crime in Russia under a new law passed after Moscow sent troops to Ukraine in February 2022. Kremlin critics were regularly charged under the law.
Gallyamov described the crackdown on him as part of the Russian government’s “intimidation strategy”.
“It’s not an attempt to get at me – it’s impossible. It’s a message for the rest,” he said.
“As in: ‘Don’t criticize, don’t think that your independent view of what is happening will go unpunished’.”