Overview
- The State Duma, which voted Wednesday, approved a bill that authorizes the president to send forces abroad to protect Russian citizens.
- The text allows deployments if Russians are arrested, investigated, put on trial, or otherwise pursued by foreign states or international bodies that Russia does not belong to.
- President Vladimir Putin has 14 days to sign the bill into law, setting a late‑May deadline for the measure to take effect.
- Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin called Western courts a repressive system and Defense Committee chair Andrey Kartapolov said the law counters what he called rampant russophobia.
- EU defense officials told POLITICO they fear the Kremlin could try to probe NATO in the next year or two, and reporters note the bill echoes the Kremlin’s 2022 claim of protecting Russian-speakers in Ukraine.