A PARTICULARLY GOOD TIME TO ARM THE SEPARATISTS:

Responding to the mention of a recent mayovka event at a meeting, Putin offered insight into where his thoughts are these days.

The term mayovka has been linked to both innocent springtime activities and revolutionary dissidents, and Putin seemed to zero in on the latter, expressing a desire to avoid a revolution.

Noting that the name "worried" him, he said that he hoped events like this wouldn't "lead to a revolution," per a RBC report.

"The limit on revolutions in our country has already been exhausted in the last century," said Putin, referring to a timeframe which includes the collapse of the Soviet Union, a significant development he has called the 20th century's "greatest geopolitical tragedy."

They began to show up more and more in 2019: people were displaying symbols of separatism at protests in different regions of Russia. One example that marked this movement were the flags of the Ural People's Republic at protests during the spring of 2019 against the construction of a temple in Yekaterinburg, the industrial city in the Ural mountains 1,100 miles east of Moscow.

The Russian Federation consists of 85 federal subjects, consisting of republics, krais, oblasts and cities of federal importance (two located on the Crimean peninsula are not internationally recognized). Every federal subject has its own head, a Parliament and Constitutional Court. The system was an attempt made in Soviet times to solve the problem of the country's ethnic and economic diversity by forming national republics.

So, the population of the Russian Federation does not consider a federal center or federation as a core value. For that reason, in some territories people may perceive their separation from Russia as quite possible.

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