Deputies from 18 municipal districts in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Kolpino have called for the resignation of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to a petition posted on Twitter on Monday, CNN reported.

“We, the municipal deputies of Russia, believe that the actions of President Vladimir Putin harm the future of Russia and its citizens. We demand the resignation of Vladimir Putin from the post of President of the Russian Federation,” reads the petition published by Ksenia Torstrom, a local deputy of the Semeniv district of St. Petersburg.

The petition was submitted after the first regional and municipal elections in Russia since the beginning of the war, in which pro-Kremlin candidates won convincingly.

“The text of the petition is concise and does not “discredit” anyone. If you are a Mundep [deputați municipali] and want to join, welcome,” Thorstrom said in a post on Twitter.

The council of the Moscow district (Lomonosov) also demanded Putin’s resignation. “Your views and your management model are hopelessly outdated and hinder the development of Russia and its human potential,” the message reads.

Russian officials demanded that Putin be indicted

Last week, deputies of the Smolninsk municipality in St. Petersburg appealed to the State Duma of the Russian Federation with a request for the impeachment of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the document, in the war started by Vladimir Putin on February 24, “capable parts” of the Russian army are being destroyed, “capable youth, citizens of Russia” are being killed, the country’s economy is suffering, the length of Russia’s border with NATO countries is doubling, and Ukraine is getting new weapons, albeit one the “demilitarization” of the country was one of the goals of the “special military operation”.

The document also states that the Russian President’s decision to conduct a “military special operation harms the security of Russia and its citizens.”

“In this regard, we ask you, as deputies of the State Duma, to come up with a proposal to charge the President of the Russian Federation with treason with the aim of removing him from office,” the appeal reads.

According to a tweet by one of the local officials, Nikita Yuferev, several MPs have now been charged with defamation of the Russian military.

Change of discourse on Russian state television as well

This whole move comes in the context of Russian state media also changing their tone on President Putin’s war.

If at the beginning of the war commentators on Russian state television competed with each other in support of Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation”, including threatening messages from the West, then the lightning counteroffensive of the Ukrainian troops forced a change in the discourse in the state media, calling, among other things, for peace talks with Ukraine.

Boris Nadezhdin, a former liberal politician and regular talk show host, told Gazprom-owned NTV that advisers misled Putin into believing Ukraine would quickly surrender and called for peace talks to end the conflict quickly, Newsweek reports.

Vitaly Ganchev, a Russian-appointed official of the Kharkiv region, told the state TV channel “Russia-24” that Russian troops were outnumbered “eight times”. He also stated, without providing evidence, that Ukrainian forces were reinforced by “Western mercenaries”.

Ganchev said that the “situation is getting more difficult every hour”, saying that the border with Russia’s Belgorod region is closed.