Putin sacks arrested governor despite protests backing him

Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a decree on Monday to sack the governor of the far-eastern Khabarovsk region, Sergei Furgal, despite a series of mass protests backing him.

Furgal, elected two years ago in an upset of the Kremlin-supported incumbent, was arrested this month on charges of having organized multiple murders of rival businessmen about 15 years ago.

Tens of thousands of people have rallied in support of Furgal in recent weeks in the region's largest protests in decades.

Putin's decree said that he was removing Furgal because of a "loss of confidence" in the regional leader.

He appointed another member of Furgal's Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), federal parliament member Mikhail Degtyarev, to serve as acting governor.

Furgal is considered the "organizer of an attempted murder and the murder of a number of business people" in 2004 and 2005, according to Russia's top investigative agency.

Furgal has attested that he is innocent. LDPR party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has denounced the legal proceedings as politically motivated, saying: "This is a very big political case."

Furgal, previously a career doctor turned entrepreneur, was elected as a regional lawmaker in Khabarovsk in 2005 and appointed to the federal parliament in Moscow two years later. He served in Russia's lower house of parliament for 11 years, from 2007 to 2018.