The ultra-nationalist veteran of Russian political life Vladimir Zhirinovsky has died at the age of 75, the speaker of the lower house of Parliament, Viacheslav Volodin, announced on Wednesday.
“His personality is so great that it is difficult to imagine the development of the political system of modern Russia without him,” Volodin wrote on his Telegram channel about Zhirinovski, who has always avoided opposing President Vladimir Putin.
“He had a deep understanding of how the world worked, and he anticipated a lot of things,” he continued.
His fellow deputies paid tribute with a minute of silence in the Duma to this explosive personality.
According to various Russian media, Zhirinovski had been dying for two weeks after contracting covid-19. Volodin spoke on his side of a “long illness”.
The Ministry of Health told Russian news agencies that “great specialists, doctors, fought to the end for their lives.”
His death “is a blow to Russia, to the army of his followers,” said the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR), which he led for more than 30 years.
Positioned on the extreme right, Vladimir Zhirinovski participated in almost all the presidential elections in modern Russia and his party was always represented in local and national instances, playing the role of a noisy but not rebellious opposition.
His diatribes, his warlike outbursts and his surprise appearances, for example throwing a glass of water and insulting an opponent in a debate, or fighting with a deputy inside Parliament, will remain in the memory of the Russians.
His last coup dates back to December 27, when he predicted that 2022 “will not be a peaceful year, it will be the year in which Russia will once again be a power”, calling to “wait for February 22”.
Chance or not of the calendar, that day Vladimir Putin recognized the pro-Russian separatists of the Ukrainian Donbas, before launching the invasion of that country two days later.
