The Observer - 04.08.2019

Section:OBS 2N PaGe:16 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 18:01 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Observer
  16 04.08.19 Special report

YELTSIN’S PM

Brought in as a

transition fi gure

who could be

manipulated,

Putin soon

brought the

oligarchs to heel.

Reuters

KGB MAN

Putin joined the

security service

in 1975 and

was on a post-

ing in Dresden

when the Berlin

wall fell. Russian

Archives/Rex

ACTION MAN

The president

proves his

macho

credentials with

a dive to the bed

of the Black Sea

in 2015. Tass

strict limitations on political freedom.

The protests are the biggest the

capital has seen for nearly a decade.

The issue of independent and oppo-

sition candidates being barred from

standing in September’s elections to

the Moscow city parliament is rel-

atively niche, but a broader, more

existential discontent has coalesced

around it. Yesterday , central Moscow

was again thronged with protesters,

who turned out despite the knowl-

edge that they risked arrest, court

cases and prison terms.

Sergei Orlov, a 33-year-old IT

worker , said he hadn’t been to

many demonstrations but had been

angered by last weekend’s crackdown.

“My mother taught me to vote, and

these elections show that even that’s

not possible,” he said, walking with

hundreds of protesters near Pushkin

Square, as riot police looked on.

Rainy weather combined with the

strong police response to last week-

end’s rally meant that the num-

bers of protesters were lower than

had been expected. Nevertheless,

the anger being expressed suggests

that the bargain president Vladimir

Putin allowed Sobyanin to make with

Russia’s capital is beginning to dis-

integrate, just as Putin’s popularity

across Russia is sliding. The aggres-

sive line the authorities have taken

could be counterproductive, but con-

cessions may start a spiral effect that

will chip away at the Kremlin’s grip

on power.

Leading the protests are associ-

ates of campaigner Alexei Navalny ,

whose team of investigators shine a

light on rampant corruption among

Russia’s elite. Their well-documented

and slickly produced videos con-

tain allegations that are hard for the

Kremlin to brush off. Punishments

for Navalny’s activities in recent years

have included a ban on appearing on

state television, repeated court cases ,

the jailing of his brother for several

years, an attack with green paint that

almost made him blind in one eye,

and a refusal to allow him on to the

ballot paper for the 2018 presidential

election. He was jailed for 30 days last

month to keep him away from this

round of protests, and last week suf-

fered what his lawyers claim could

have been a poisoning attempt in jail.

A

group of Navanly’s

associates are emerg-

ing from his shadow

and proving equally

problematic. Lyubov

Sobol, a 31-year-old

lawyer who has worked with Navalny

since 2011, planned to stand as an

independent in the Moscow elections

and collected the thousands of voter

signatures required , only to be told,

like others, that an “expert commit-

tee” had found many of the signatures

to be fake, and her candidacy inva-

lid. Refusing to take no for an answer,

she was carried out of the electoral

committee offi ce on the sofa where

she had planted herself. Videos of her

berating electoral offi cials about their

corruption have gone viral.

“Of course, they understand that

if they let even one independent into

the Moscow city parliament, it will

become a completely different place,”

she told the Observer last week. “There

is no discussion about any important

issues there at the moment.”

Sobol is three weeks into a hunger

strike over not being allow ed to stand,

and was speaking from a camp bed

at the independent candidates’ cam-

paign headquarters. Her voice still

had its steely resolve, but she spoke

at a fraction of her usual volume, and

complained of a spinning head and

kidney pain. She is determined to

continue her protest, however.

When she began her hunger strike,

even many of her supporters thought

it was a strange battle to pick, but the

protest is now about more than a

mere local parliament vote, and Sobol

has become one of its key fi gures.

Yesterday she gathered her strength

to set out for the protest, but was

detained before it even started. “Who

are you scared of? Are you scared of

your own citizens, of a woman on

her 20th day of hunger strike?” she

shouted as riot police bundled her

into a waiting van.

The political mood now is remi-

niscent of the last major protest sea-

son to hit the country, in late 2011

and 2012, when the illusion that

Russia could be heading for liberal-

isation under Dmitry Medvedev was

dispelled by Putin’s announcing his

return to the Kremlin. Then, Putin’s

sliding ratings were boosted by a

new conservative ideology, and later

by the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Demonstrators were painted as an

anti-patriotic “fi fth column” oppos-

ing the pro-Putin, patriotic majority.

Alongside the stick came the carrot

of a new Moscow: landscaped parks,

pedestrianised streets and a food

and drink scene that wowed football

fans who came for the World Cup last

year. For many in the capital, everyday

life really did become more pleasant.

But if 2018 was the summer of foot-

ball-themed street parties, interna-

tional fraternity and pride in the new

Moscow, 2019 is shaping up to be the

summer of police crackdowns.

“The period of Crimea euphoria is

over; the fi ve years when the popu-

lation was mobilised have come to

an end,” said Lev Gudkov, director of

Levada-Center, Russia’s only inde-

pendent polling agency. The major-

ity of Russians still see the west as an

enemy, he said, but far fewer are will-

ing to make personal sacrifi ces for the

sake of the confrontation.

Real incomes across Russia have

dropped by more than 10% over

the past fi ve years, and an unpop-

ular pension reform last year led to

a 20% drop in Putin’s approval rat-

ing. Many of the 64% who still sup-

port the president do so for lack of

viable alternatives, and it is hard to

imagine a “second Crimea” that could

provide Putin with a new boost. In

the provinces, discontent is fuelled

by economic hardship and a lack of

prospects, but in the absence of an

organised opposition network, pro-

tests that do erupt are usually over

local issues such as waste disposal or

city planning, rather than linked to

concrete political demands.

The Moscow phenomenon is dif-

ferent. Demonstrations this summer

have been noticeably more youth-

led than those in 2012. Many of those

protesting are young people who are

doing reasonably well fi nancially, but

want a different kind of country.

“I have been to a lot of protests and

this time I really noticed the gener-

ation factor,” said Yevgenia Albats ,

a veteran journalist who edits New

Times magazine. “There were few

people there my age; they were all

young , and they’re not scared.”

Young people in Putin’s Russia have

it better, relative to their elders, than

their peers in western Europe, Gudkov

said. While the richest segment of

most western societies is the pre-

pension age group, in Russia, 35-year-

Continued from page 15

Seven faces of

Vladimir Putin

РЕЛИЗ

ПОДГОТОВИЛА

ГРУППА

"What's News"

VK.COM/WSNWS

РЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS