“Putin’s wizard” is dead

Vladimir Putin’s “wizard” Vladimir Churov died of a serious heart attack on Wednesday at the age of 70. This is reported by the Russian state news agency Tass. Churov was chairman of the Central Election Commission from 2007 to 2016 and is said to have helped Putin win several times.

“It is indeed sad news,” State Duma deputy Leonid Ivlev told the agency. «[Er starb] after surgery in a hospital at 8 a.m..” The former Russian election leader recently planned to write a book about US meddling in foreign elections.

From the mid-2000s, Putin’s “wizards” made a name for themselves far beyond Russia’s borders. Over the years he has been accused of massive electoral fraud, against which tens of thousands of Russians took to the streets and unsuccessfully called for Churov’s resignation. The election official became an object of hate and satire across the country.

At demonstrations, posters by his critics showed him disguised as a magician — an allusion to a quote from Putin ally Dmitry Medvedev, who served as Russia’s president from 2008 to 2012. “You’re almost a magician,” the “world” quoted a statement directed at. to Churov by Medvedev in 2012, when Putin replaced him. Churov had previously made a surprisingly accurate prediction of the election outcome.

The former election official only admitted at the time that there were a few minor violations of the applicable electoral law that could not have had any significant influence on the result. “Such fair and open elections do not exist in other countries,” he told the “world” at the time. In the same year, Churov was awarded the Alexander Nevsky Order for his services. (t-online, jpd)