(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) Russian businessman Alex Konanykhin, who lives and works in New York City, promised to pay $1 million to those who depose Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“I promise to pay $1,000,000 to the officer(s) who, complying with their constitutional duty, arrest(s) Putin as a war criminal under Russian and international laws,” Konanykhin wrote in a Facebook post on March 1.
Konanykhin claimed that Russian officers have the right to depose Putin because he gained and maintained his power through illegitimate means and because he has conducted an unjust war against Ukraine, reported The Blaze
“Putin is not the Russian president as he came to power as the result of a special operation of blowing up apartment buildings in Russia, then violated the Constitution by eliminating free elections and murdering his opponents,” Konanykhin said.
Konanykhin referred to several terrorist attacks Chechens committed during the Second Chechen War, which Putin led as prime minister in 1999 and 2000.
Most scholars have rejected the notion that Putin staged the terrorist attacks as a pretext to escalate the Chechen War because he suspected that his involvement with the war—then highly unpopular with the Russian people—would end his political career.
Konanykhin also flipped Putin’s claims about Ukraine’s alliance with Nazis, particularly in the Azov Battalion, a regiment within the Ukrainian National Guard.
“As an ethnic Russian and a Russia citizen, I see it as my moral duty to facilitate the denazification of Russia,” he said. “I will continue my assistance to Ukraine in its heroic efforts to withstand the onslaught of Putin’s Orda.”
Orda refers to a Steppe-style military campaign that the Mongols would have used.
Facebook removed Konanykhin’s first post because it called for Putin’s capture “dead or alive.”
Konanykhin said that he hopes other people will pledge to increase the bounty.
“If enough other people make similar statements, it may increase the chances of Putin getting arrested and brought to justice,” he said. “Putin is known to murder his opponents. He has millions of them now.”
