4.6.22
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, a notorious political showman and demagogue who founded Russia’s far-right Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and led it for over 30 years, has died in a Moscow hospital, the lower-house State Duma confirmed Wednesday. He was 75. According to Russian media reports, Zhirinovsky, who had been in declining health for some time, had been gravely ill for weeks after contracting Covid-19, despite claiming to have received eight vaccine doses. As leader since 1989 of the LDPR, which despite its name espoused a rambunctious ultranationalist populism, Zhirinovsky carved out a unique space for himself within the Russian political system through his outrageous personality and his often vulgar outbursts. In recent years, he was sometimes dubbed “Russia’s Trump,” and his political style compared to the former U.S. President. His provocative policy positions proposing the military conquest of Central Asia and the Middle East, bombarding the Baltic states with toxic waste and dropping nuclear bombs on Japan and Britain, were matched by his outrageous personal conduct, including engaging in fistfights in the Russian parliament, physically attacking political opponents and on one occasion instructing aides to rape a pregant journalist.
