The mayor of the seaside town of Bolshoy Kamen, Rustyam Abushayev, who was put on the federal wanted list in March on charges of fraud and illegal business, posted a video in which he claims to be at the front. He posted the video on his Telegram channel.
“I made the decision to come here a long time ago, but I especially felt the urgent need when I participated in events for the families of the mobilized. This is our Motherland, our people, and I want to defend my country and my people,” Abushaev says in the video, standing in military uniform and holding a sniper rifle.
According to him, “if our guys had not defended the interests of our Motherland here, the enemy had long been near Smolensk, near Moscow, and even, possibly, in Vladivostok.”
The mayor does not mention his criminal prosecution.
In March, a criminal case was opened against Abushaev as the former head of the Nadezhdinsky district. He is accused of fraud with land (part 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) and illegal business (Article 289 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). The crimes he is charged with date back to the period when he headed another municipality in Primorsky Krai, the Nadezhda district.
Officially, Abushaev is on vacation from March 15 to April 18.