Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday raised the possibility of lifting the current moratorium on the death penalty and resuming executions if deemed necessary to «protect the interests» of the state and its citizens.
Medvedev, number two in the National Security Council, has warned on his Telegram account that only «a change in the legal positions of the Constitutional Court» would suffice, in a message aimed primarily at those planning to commit acts of sabotage or terrorism.
«No one showed mercy to saboteurs who were engaged in subversive activities on the home front on the orders of the Nazi butchers,» he has said, going back to World War II, according to the TASS news agency. «There was only one possible sentence for these scoundrels: execution without trial,» he has apostrophized.
Medvedev recalled that other nuclear powers, such as the United States, continue to apply capital punishment. Russia has maintained a moratorium on such punishments since 1996, although pro-Russian administrations in eastern Ukraine revived them in the context of the current conflict.
