Tag: Russian politics

‘Shpilkin method’: Statistical tool gauges voter fraud in Putin landslide

Post By World , , , , , , ,

As many as half of all the votes reported for Vladimir Putin in Russia’s presidential election last week were fraudulent, according to Russian independent media reports using a statistical method devised by analyst Sergey Shpilkin to estimate the extent of voter manipulation.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed a landslide victory on Sunday that will keep him in power until at least 2030, following a three-day presidential election that Western critics dismissed as neither free nor fair.

The criticism is shared by Russia’s remaining independent media outlets, which have published their estimates of the extent of voter manipulation during the March 15-17 election that saw Putin clinch a fifth term in office with a record 87% of ballots cast.

Massive fraud

“Around 22 million ballots officially in favour of Vladimir Putin were falsified,” said the Russian investigative journalism website Meduza, which interviewed Russian electoral analyst Ivan Shukshin.

Important Stories, another investigative news website, gave a similar number, estimating that 21.9 million false votes were cast for the incumbent president.

The opposition media outlet Novaya Gazeta Europe came up with an even bigger number, claiming that 31.6 million ballots were falsified in Putin’s favour.

That figure “corresponds to almost 50 percent of all the votes cast in the president’s favour, according to the Central Election Commission [Putin received 64.7 million votes]”, said Jeff Hawn, a Russia expert at the London School of Economics.

All three estimates suggest that “fraud on a scale unprecedented in Russian electoral history” was committed, added Matthew Wyman, a specialist in Russian politics at Keele University in the UK.

The three news outlets all used the same algorithmic method to estimate the extent of voter fraud. It is named after Russian statistician Sergey Shpilkin, who developed it a decade ago.

Shpilkin’s work analysing Russian elections has won him several prestigious independent awards in Russia, including the PolitProsvet prize for electoral research awarded in 2012 by the Liberal Mission Foundation.

However, he has also made some powerful enemies by denouncing electoral fraud. In February 2023, Shpilkin was added to Russia’s list of “foreign agents”.

Shady turnout figures

The Shpilkin method “offers a simple way of quantitatively assessing electoral fraud in Russia, whereas most other approaches focus on detecting whether or not fraud has been committed”, said Dmitry Kogan, an Estonia-based statistician who has worked with Shpilkin and others to develop tools for analysing election results. 

This approach – used by Meduza, Important Stories and Novaya Gazeta – is based “on the turnout at each polling station”, said Kogan.

The aim is to identify polling stations where turnout does not appear to be abnormally high, and then use them as benchmarks to get an idea of the actual vote distribution between the various candidates.

In theory, the share of votes in favour of each candidate does not change – or does so only marginally –according to turnout rate.

In other words, the Shpilkin method has been able to determine that in Russia, candidate A always has an average X percent of the vote and candidate B around Y percent, whether there are 100, 200 or more voters in an “honest” polling station.

In polling stations with high voter turnout, “we realised that this proportional change in vote distribution completely disappears, and that Vladimir Putin is the main beneficiary of the additional votes cast”, said Alexander Shen, a mathematician and statistician at the French National Centre for Scientific Research’s Laboratory of Computer Science, Robotics and Microelectronics in Montpellier. .

To quantify the fraud, Putin’s score is compared with what the result would have been if the distribution of votes had been the same as at an “honest” polling station. The resulting discrepancy with his official score gives an idea of the extent to which the results were manipulated in his favour.

The Shpilkin method makes it possible to put a figure on the “ballot box stuffing and accounting tricks to add votes for Vladimir Putin”, said Shen.

Limitations of the Shpilkin method

However, “this procedure would be useless if the authorities used more subtle methods to rig the results”, Kogan cautioned. 

For instance, if the “fraudsters” took votes away from one of the candidates and attributed them to Putin, the Shpilkin method would no longer work, he explained.

“The fact that the authorities seem to be continuously using the most basic methods shows that it doesn’t bother them that people are aware of the manipulation,” Kogan added.

Another problem with the Shpilkin method is that it requires “at least a few polling stations where you can be reasonably sure that no fraud has occurred”, said Kogan, for whom that condition was not easy to be sure about in last week’s presidential election.

“I’m not sure we can really reconstruct a realistic distribution of votes between the candidates, because I don’t know if there is enough usable data,” added Shen.

Does this negate the validity of the estimates put forward by independent Russian media?

Kogan said he stopped trying to quantify electoral fraud in Russia in 2021. He explained: “At the time, I estimated that nearly 20 million votes in the Duma [lower house] election had been falsified. Then I said to myself, ‘what’s the point in going to all this trouble if the ballots were completely rigged?’”

Nevertheless, he said it is important to have estimates based on the Shpilkin method because even if it is difficult to get a precise idea, “the order of magnitude is probably right”. 

These rough estimates are also “an important political weapon”, said Wyman, stressing the need to “undermine the narrative of the Russian authorities, who claim that the high turnout and the vote in favour of Putin demonstrate that the country is united”.

It is also an important message to the international community, added Hawn.

“The stereotype is that Russians naturally vote for authoritarian figures,” he said. “By showing how inflated the figures are, this is a way of proving that the reality is far more nuanced.”

This article has been translated from the original in French. 

Source link

#Shpilkin #method #Statistical #tool #gauges #voter #fraud #Putin #landslide

Russia’s presidential election: Three Putin challengers but little suspense

Post By World , , , , , , ,

President Vladimir Putin faces just three rivals in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election after anti-war candidates were barred from running. But Leonid Slutsky, Nikolai Kharitonov and Vladislav Davankov do not pose much of a challenge for the Russian leader, who is all but guaranteed to secure another six-year term. 

The first polls in Russia’s March 15-17 presidential election opened in the country’s easternmost Kamchatka Peninsula region at 8am local time Friday, with the vast voting exercise spanning 11 time zones set to finish in the westernmost Kaliningrad enclave at 8pm on Sunday.

The election holds little suspense. Incumbent Vladimir Putin – who has been in power either as president or prime minister for nearly a quarter-century – is set to secure another six-year term. 

But a longtime autocrat requires a veneer of legitimacy, even in Russia. Voters will thus have a choice between the almost guaranteed victor and three pre-approved candidates.   

Ultranationalist Leonid Slutsky of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladislav Davankov of the relatively liberal New People’s Party and veteran candidate Nikolai Kharitonov of the Communist Party are the supporting characters in 2024’s electoral choreography. In a possible sign of Russia’s shrinking tolerance for political challenges, that’s four fewer candidates than qualified for the 2018 presidential election. 

Competition and criticism was severely curtailed in the lead-up to the 2024 vote, with authorities blocking a number of opposition hopefuls and critics using a variety of means, including labelling them as “foreign agents”.   

“Between the ‘foreign agent’ labels, the fines, imprisonments and the incredible hardening of the regime, the number of candidates is limited. However, they represent real political forces. The nationalist right carries political weight in Russia, as do the Communists, whose score could be in the region of 10 percent,” noted Jean de Gliniasty, former French ambassador to Russia and current senior research fellow at the French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS).

Read more‘Noon against Putin’: Navalny widow realises his last wish for the Russian opposition

‘I don’t dream of beating Putin’

But while some of the candidates represent established political parties, they do not pose much of a challenge to Putin, nor have they put up much of a fight on the campaign trail.

Shortly after registering his candidacy in December 2023, Slutsky – the candidate from the ultranationalist LDPR founded by the late right-wing populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky – appeared certain of defeat.

“I don’t dream of beating Putin. What’s the point?” Slutsky told reporters. The 56-year-old Russian politician who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Russian lower house, the State Duma, then predicted “a huge victory” for Putin.

At 75, Kharitonov is the oldest candidate on the ballot. A veteran Communist Party politician who has been a State Duma deputy since 1993, Kharitonov ran for president in 2004, coming in second to Putin with 13.7 percent of the vote.

This time, Kharitonov ran a low-key campaign, focused on Soviet-era issues, including criticising capitalism, promoting industrial nationalisation and an increase in the Russian birth rate.

Davankov, 39, is the youngest of the opposition candidates. The former businessman-turned-politician promotes greater freedom for businesses and a stronger role for regional authorities. 

The deputy chairman of the State Duma, where his party holds 15 of the 450 seats, Davankov has tried to position himself as a candidate opposed to the Kremlin’s excessive curbs on personal freedoms. He favours peace talks with Ukraine, following the Kremlin’s official line, while reiterating that it should be “on our terms and with no rollback”, meaning Russia should not cede territory it has occupied.

Read moreFive things to know about Russia’s upcoming presidential election

“Each candidate presents juxtaposed ideologies and domestic policies, but collectively these contribute to Putin’s goal of tightening his grip on Russia during his next presidential term,” noted Callum Fraser of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in a column, “Putin’s Grand Plan for Russia’s 2024 Elections“.

According to Putin’s critics, these three quasi-opponents, integrated into the Russian political system, perform an important function: to channel the discontent of various strata of society and provide a pluralist veneer for the vote, while the real opposition has been wiped out by years of repression.

“Throughout history, Russian power has always been extremely careful to respect formal rules. Even a very authoritarian regime faces public opinion and cares about it. This election remains a test of Putin’s legitimacy and popularity. Even if this test appears to be a formality, it has value for those in power,” explained de Gliniasty.

No political space for anti-war candidates

But not all positions on the political spectrum are represented on the ballot this year. In the lead-up to the presidential election, criticism of the Ukraine invasion was effectively suppressed with the arrests of tens of thousands of peaceful protesters. Hefty fines were also slapped on anyone voicing opposition to the war, according to international rights groups.

Two independent presidential hopeful running on anti-war platforms, Yekaterina Duntsova and Boris Nadezhdin, were barred from running by the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).

While the CEC barred Duntsova in December, Nadezhdin’s candidacy attracted attention, with thousands lining up in cities across Russia in January to give their signatures supporting the anti-war candidate.

That did not work in Nadezhdin’s favour.

“The question obviously arose of leaving out a voice that could have played a symbolic role and brought in, dare I say it, left-leaning, liberal voters. Boris Nadezhdin could have stood for election if he had achieved a modest score, but faced with the enthusiasm generated by his candidacy, the Kremlin preferred to send him packing,” explained de Gliniasty.

A ‘noon vote’ campaign for Navalny supporters

Despite the sweeping crackdowns, some of Putin’s opponents have vowed to express their opposition at the polls. On March 5, Alexei Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya called the election a “masquerade” and urged Russians to cast protest votes.

“You can vote for any candidate except Putin. You can spoil your ballot paper, you can write ‘Navalny’ in big letters,” she urged.

In an action called “Noon against Putin”, Navalny supporters plan to go to their local polling station on Sunday exactly at midday, stand in line for a voting slip, and then vote in a way that expresses their protest.

Such social mobilisation comes with serious risks. Some Navalny supporters received letters last week warning them that prosecutors had reason to believe they will be participating in an illegal event that “bore signs of extremist activity”, an accusation Russia often levies at enemies of the Kremlin. 

The ‘non-war’ across the border

Although the outcome of the vote is certain, the authorities have gone through great lengths to encourage Russians to go to the polls, dialing up the patriotism and presenting the vote as an essential step towards “victory” in Ukraine.

Over the past few weeks, Putin did several media appearances with the heroes of the “special military operation”, as the Ukraine war is still called in Russia.

But the campaign did not feature any debate on the conflict in Russia’s neighbouring state.

“One might have expected the subject of war to be central to the election campaign,” said Anna Colin-Lebedev, a specialist in post-Soviet societies at Paris-Nanterre University. “However, the debates – which did not excite the Russian public – were mainly devoted to other subjects such as education, culture, the economy, agriculture, demographics [and] housing” in what she called a “framed”, pre-approved narrative.

More than two years after Moscow launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin is attempting a tricky balancing act on the subject, according to experts.

“The authorities are caught in a contradiction,” noted de Gliniasty. “They want to talk as little as possible about the war in Ukraine, as if to say that everything is fine, that everything is normal and that it’s just a special operation. But at the same time, it wants this election to serve to legitimise the invasion.” 

Read more‘I know Putin can eliminate me’: Russian opponent speaks out as election gets underway

The turnout barometer

Given the stakes, the authorities are deeply invested in keeping up appearances by holding elections under the guise of a functioning democracy.

“These elections are very important for the Kremlin,” Nikolai Petrov of London-based Chatham House told the AFP. “It is needed to demonstrate that Russians overwhelmingly support Putin” during the military offensive.

Turnout then becomes a critical issue, as it does in most authoritarian countries holding questionable elections.

Some managers at state companies have ordered employees to vote – even asking them to submit photographs of their ballot papers, reported Reuters, quoting six sources who did not want to be named. Cash machines also remind Russians to vote. And in Russian-occupied Ukraine, residents have complained of pro-Russian collaborators with ballot boxes going from house to house looking for voters accompanied by armed soldiers. 

Then there’s the question of vote-rigging.

“Parliamentary elections may be rigged in Russia, but presidential elections are not,” de Gliniasty said. “There are cameras and observers in polling stations. There’s no need for rigging because everything has been cleaned up beforehand so the result will be perfectly acceptable.” 

But given the context of the Ukraine war and the hardening stance of the Russian regime, “we cannot predict what will happen in these elections”, admitted the former French ambassador.

Putin won nearly 77 percent of the vote in 2018, 14 points more than in 2012. At the country’s helm for almost a quarter-century, the indisputable master of the Kremlin has yet to name a successor. Putin signed into law a constitutional amendment in 2021 that altered term limits and will allow him to remain in power until 2036.

This article has been translated from the original in French.

Source link

#Russias #presidential #election #Putin #challengers #suspense

Anti-Putin Russian groups stage new cross-border raids into Russia

Post By World , , , , , , , ,

Pro-Ukrainian forces are conducting incursions into Russian territory, temporarily seizing a village in the border region of Kursk, reminiscent of similar operations in the spring of 2023 but occurring in a very different military and political context.

Ukraine-based Russian militias are again on the attack, staging cross-border raids this week into Russian territory. Pro-Ukrainian forces even claimed on Tuesday, March 12, to have taken full control of a Russian village. The Freedom of Russia Legion, mainly composed of anti-Putin Russian fighters, posted a video showing Russian soldiers deserting Tetkino, a municipality in the Kursk region, on the Russian side of the border. 

Forces from other pro-Ukrainian groups – the Russian Volunteer Corps and the Siberian Battalion – also announced incursions into the Kursk and Belgorod regions. These attacks were carried out with the support of “tanks, armoured vehicles, and drones“, according to analysts from the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based research group. 

Moscow initially denied the attackers had entered areas inside Russia before stating later that the enemy fighters did not advance very far into Russia and were all driven back. “Thanks to the sacrifice of Russian soldiers, all attacks by Ukrainian terrorists have been repelled,” affirmed the Russian ministry of defence. 

The situation on the ground appears to be somewhat less clear than suggested by Russian authorities. “Currently, there are still battles around Tetkino and pro-Ukrainian forces still seem capable of controlling part of this locality,” says Sim Tack, chief military analyst at Force Analysis, a conflict monitoring company. 

Russia’s national guard said on Thursday it was fighting off attacks from pro-Ukrainian groups in the Kursk region, as clashes continued at the border. 

The Russian defence ministry claimed its troops killed 195 Ukrainian soldiers and destroyed five tanks and four armoured infantry vehicles, two days after saying it killed 234 Ukrainian troops in another border assault. 

In a joint statement, three pro-Kyiv militia groups called on Russian authorities to evacuate civilians from the regions of Belgorod and Kursk, saying that “civilians should not suffer from the war”. 

The current incursions are “very similar to what happened in the spring and summer of 2023”, notes Huseyn Aliyev, a specialist in the Russia-Ukraine war at the University of Glasgow. In that incursion, pro-Kyiv Russian troops had crossed the border – a little further south, in the Belgorod region – and temporarily seized a village before retreating under pressure from Russian artillery. 

At the time unprecedented, last year’s incursions served to put pressure on Russia by highlighting that its national territory was poorly protected. The dynamics of the war were then in Ukraine’s favour, given its army had managed to fend off Russian offensives. The 2023 raids had begun just before the start of Kyiv’s counteroffensive and gave the impression that Ukraine could strike anywhere. 

The situation today is very different. The counteroffensive has fizzled out and Ukraine is now more on the back foot. As Aliyev notes: “Moscow has built a defensive line – similar to the one it set up in Ukraine – about twenty kilometres inside Russian territory.” This line of  trenches extends from the north of the Kursk region to the south of the Belgorod region. 

Before last year, “Russia didn’t have any defensive positions there”, Aliyev adds, meaning incursions could be made deeper into Russian territory. 

Pro-Ukrainian forces chose to attack Tetkino for its vulnerable position.  

“The village captured is not behind the defensive line. It’s a buffer zone, what Russia calls a security zone,” Aliyev says. “On the other side of the border the region is mostly under control of Ukrainians, so it’s not difficult for pro-Ukraine forces to cross the border and occupy that village” 

An attempt to influence the Russian election? 

If taking a border village like Tetkino was a relatively easy objective for the Freedom of Russia Legion and other armed groups of anti-Putin Russians, it remains to be seen how long they’ll be able to stay there. “If they’ve taken armoured vehicles, it’s also in anticipation of a rapid retreat, so they suspect they won’t be able to occupy Tetkino” for long, notes Tack.    

But why expend resources on a raid into Russia instead of strengthening defences on the front line in the Donbas, where Ukraine’s forces are under great duress? Officially, the Freedom of Russia Legion claimed it wanted to “influence the presidential election” to be held March 15-17, according to the Moscow Times 

The pro-Kyiv Russians aim to show their compatriots that there is an alternative to Putin. “It is a way for them to try to prove to the Russians that they have the means to ‘liberate Russia from Putin’,” explains Nicolo Fasola, a specialist in Russian military issues at the University of Bologna. 

The Ukrainian military leadership also stated that the Russian militia groups had acted on their own without informing Kyiv. According to Tack, this is unlikely “because to be able to move troops and tanks in this region, at least tacit approval from the Ukrainian army is needed. But this helps strengthen the narrative of an operation carried out by Russians to overthrow Vladimir Putin“. 

But the ambitions of the anti-Putin forces are obviously unattainable, Tack says. “These fighters do not have the means to go very far,” he notes, adding that they did not even attempt to break through the new Russian defensive lines. 

Few Russians will even hear about the capture of Tetkino, says Aliyev. “The problem is that most Russian don’t follow independent media or Western mass media. And they will be fed with the Russian propaganda about a Ukrainian failed ‘terrorist’ attempt” against Russia.” 

Kyiv’s ‘diversion capabilities’ 

In this regard, the cross-border raids could even be counterproductive. Coming just days before the Russian presidential election, “these incursions will likely cement the attractiveness of Putin as president”, says Fasola. “The rhetoric of a ‘besieged Russia’ is key to Putin’s platform and these attacks on Russian territory basically prove he’s right, in the eyes of the larger Russian public.” 

But these operations are not useless in the eyes of the Ukrainian high command. “These anti-Putin Russian forces are part of the diversion capabilities at Kyiv’s disposal,” notes Tack. “Each of their operations serves to push Moscow to allocate resources capable of intervening quickly to defend the entry points into Russian territory.”  

The raids are part of “a broader strategy at work in recent weeks”, says Tack. There were attacks against Russian warships in the Black Sea at the end of February, followed by the strike using dozens of drones against the Lukoil oil refinery in Kirichi, near Saint Petersburg. These diversions are intended to demonstrate Ukraine’s disruptive capability, even when pushed into an essentially defensive role on the front line. 

This article has been translated from the original in French.  

Source link

#AntiPutin #Russian #groups #stage #crossborder #raids #Russia

Russia is now pretending it knows nothing of its colonial legacy

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Russia has always been one of the largest European colonial powers. Yet, its current leaders are engaging in the historical game of geopolitical opportunism that has been a recurring theme in the nation’s grand strategy, Maxim Trudolyubov writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

The ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine in Europe’s eastern fringes, Hamas’ brutal assault on Israel and the ensuing war, and the intermittent clashes between Iran’s proxies and Western forces in the Red Sea beg the question: will these conflicts result in victory, and if so, who will come out on top?

In the West, Ukraine, and even Russia, the anticipation of a victorious outcome is tied to the prevailing understanding of the twentieth century as a master narrative for the future — as a go-to history, which helps to grapple with war and conflict. 

This narrative boils down to defeating one evil in 1945 and another in 1989-1990.

The story of the defeat of evil

In 1945, Germany’s defeat was total. The unconditional victory of the anti-Hitler coalition, which included the United States, the Soviet Union, and China, alongside numerous other countries, followed by initiatives like the Marshall Plan and efforts to prevent new wars, laid the groundwork for the postwar West as well as the postwar Soviet Union.

There was a unanimous agreement on the severity of Nazi crimes, fostering a shared set of values enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, allowing people from diverse cultures to find common ground. It paved the way for the creation of the State of Israel — a protected home for the victims of Nazism.

Four decades later, a world divided by the Cold War found unity again. The fall of the Berlin Wall accompanied by a wave of velvet revolutions that witnessed the collapse of communist regimes in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and other Eastern Bloc nations, marked the triumph of the West. 

Many former communist bloc countries joined the European Union. This time Russia was on the losing side, although it did, for a time, become a partner in the restored victorious coalition.

Yet, this historical consciousness often overlooks events that were pivotal for many non-Western countries and cultures. 

The former colonies experienced their unique twentieth century, complete with its own set of heroes and villains. 

In parallel to the Western narrative, the non-Western twentieth century was characterised by the emergence of national consciousness, the struggle for independence from Western colonial powers, and the establishment of their own political systems.

In its essence, it’s a story only tangentially related to, and much less black-and-white than the much-revered Nazi defeat or the fall of communism in Eastern Europe.

Non-Western national resurgence

While for many in the West, the postwar decades were a time of recovery, growth, and eventual victory over communism, for many in Asia and Africa it was an era of battles for independence, civil wars, and political strife. 

Moreover, those who were on the “right side of history” in the Western twentieth century were often on the “wrong side” in twentieth-century Asia and Africa.

The British, who were part of the winning coalition of 1945 in leading roles, crushed the rebellion of the Malayan National Liberation Army, a guerrilla force, shortly after the war. In the 1950s, the British brutally dealt with the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya.

Britain’s hasty partition of India in 1947 resulted in significant displacement of people and mass violence. 

From 1946 to 1954, France attempted to maintain control over its colonies in the Indochina peninsula through military means, leading eventually to the Vietnam War that lasted until 1975. The Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962) also witnessed violence and repression by French troops. 

In the late 1940s Indonesian Revolution, Dutch colonial forces engaged in violent clashes with Indonesian nationalists before acknowledging the establishment of an independent Indonesia.

Although China was not technically a colony, its society felt a sense of humiliation due to the concessions it was forced to make in trade and territory to both the UK and Russia. 

ADVERTISEMENT

As an example, the Convention of Peking in 1860 compelled China to give up portions of what is now known as the Far East to Russia, specifically the territories of modern Primorsky Krai and southern Khabarovsk Krai.

In short, Indian, Chinese, Middle Eastern and various other societies had their unique series of defeats and triumphs, distinctly different from those of Western nations. 

In fact, these experiences often involved confrontations with or victories over Western powers. 

At those moments in history, the Soviet Union often nominally played on the side of what is now called the Global South as part of its greater Cold War strategy. Yet, a collision of these divergent historical experiences and consciousnesses was bound to occur at some point.

Divergent views of history

It did happen, once and again, over the conflicts and wars in the Middle East. 

ADVERTISEMENT

The creation of the State of Israel was the product of a broad international consensus that emerged at a time when the anti-Hitler coalition had not yet disintegrated: both the United States and the Soviet Union voted in favour of establishing the new country.

Western politicians probably also sought to rehabilitate themselves from the fact that their countries had been reluctant in the pre-war and war years to accept Jews fleeing the deadly threat. 

In this context, the emergence of Israel was one of the most important positive events of the Western twentieth century. The efforts of many generations of Jews, a people that had not had their own sovereign state for almost 2,000 years, were crowned with success.

But in the non-Western world, this event appeared in a different light. The creators of the Western twentieth century — the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union — had long been involved in Middle Eastern politics. 

From the perspective of the peoples of Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and many others, the policies of the Western powers were pursued in the region primarily for Western — or Soviet — interests.

ADVERTISEMENT

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I was followed by an arbitrary, from this perspective, redistribution of borders and resources in the region. 

The establishment of Israel after World War II and the drawing of the borders of the new country was seen by the inhabitants of the region in this light — as a colonial redrawing of their territories by some outsiders.

In all of that, Russia was hardly the liberator or the supporter of those wronged or oppressed. On the contrary, it sat squarely in the West’s corner.

Could Moscow’s arbitrary game pay off?

The inescapable fact is that Russia stood as one of the largest European colonial powers, especially from the non-Western perspective. This holds true even today. 

Yet, Russia’s current leaders are engaging in the historical game of geopolitical opportunism that has been a recurring theme in the nation’s grand strategy. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Following in the footsteps of Stalin, who initially supported the creation of Israel in 1948 but later assumed a quasi-colonial role as a patron of Egypt, Syria, and other Arab nations, Vladimir Putin’s administration presents Moscow as both anti-Western and anti-colonial. 

And, even more cynically, while aligning with China and Iran — nations characterised by their governments’ distinct anti-Western and anti-colonial sentiments — the Kremlin is waging a colonial war of aggression against Ukraine.

While Moscow’s roots lie in Western colonial power, it skillfully projects a contrasting image to appeal to non-Western nations, successfully garnering “positive press” in the Middle East and beyond.

In the Western world, the concept of victory is deeply ingrained in the narrative of a triumphant twentieth century — a worldview in which evil is punished and its victims are rewarded. 

For Russia, a former totalitarian power, there is no such concept, because it was both a winner and a loser within the West’s historical narrative. 

ADVERTISEMENT

In the contemporary landscape, there is no compelling reason to expect a definitive victory that neatly assigns everything and everyone to predefined roles. 

The post-war world’s contours remain elusive and undefined. And Moscow wants to capitalise on that as we speak.

Maxim Trudolyubov is a Senior Fellow at the Kennan Institute and the Editor-at-Large of Meduza. He is currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna (IWM).

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

Source link

#Russia #pretending #colonial #legacy

Navalny is the latest martyr of Russian totalitarianism

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

The choice which now has to be made is not whether to appease the Kremlin or go into an open conflict with it. The choice now is either to stop Russia in Ukraine or be forced to fight a resurgent Moscow in defence of Eastern Europe as a whole, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

As much as the news of Alexei Navalny’s sudden death on Friday came as an intense shock, it’s hard to escape the blood-curdling shadow of its inevitability. 

It’s as if all democratically inclined Russians, and those who study the Russian society, knew all along that Navalny would be taken out of the picture by Vladimir Putin at some point, but at the same time hoped that it, by some miracle, not come to pass. 

The death of Navalny is not and cannot be treated as an accident. Since no factual and fair investigation can be conducted in the totalitarian Russia of today, the causes of his death will remain a mystery. 

There is no point in believing that even his remains will survive for long after they are laid to rest as they carry important evidence. 

What is true, however, is that, in August 2020, before his imprisonment, Navalny was poisoned by a neurotoxin which left permanent detrimental consequences on his health; he was kept in solitary confinement for most of his prison term, and he complained about the lack of proper medical care. 

Given the facts, his death was premeditated and orchestrated by the Russian machine of repression, even if he was not directly poisoned for the second time (which can still very well be the real cause of his death after all).

A pattern of propaganda reveals a sinister farce

The handling of Navalny’s sudden death by the Russian state propaganda follows the same pattern as in the case of his poisoning. 

There are always two versions of events that transpired — one, it was an accident, and two, it was the work of the “Anglo-Saxon” security services. 

The accidental death is the official version, the narrative which comes from the Russian penitentiary authorities. In the case of Navalny’s poisoning, the official version was that he had a medical condition and was not poisoned at all, which independent medical analysis in Germany later refuted. 

The unofficial version stems from the Russian state media propagandists and state-operated blogs. 

Their narratives coalesce and by the rule of thumb all claim that Russia had no motive to eliminate Navalny so it must have been the “perfidious Anglo-Saxons” who stand to benefit the most. 

Once one analyzes Russian narratives for years, these patterns become obvious and impossible to miss. They can only instill doubt in those outside of Russia who think about Putin’s totalitarian prison camp only in passing.

Make no mistake: The siloviki are in charge in Moscow

The final elimination of Navalny, when he was already exiled to a maximum security prison in the Arctic Circle, sends a clear message that the Kremlin has stopped pretending that it cares one bit whether it’s seen as a civilised country ruled by law or a thuggish concentration camp with neon-lit commercials. 

The great pretence, which lasted in Russia for almost two decades, was founded upon the balance of two wings of its elite — the hawkish siloviki, agents of the security services and high-ranking military officers, and the capable technocrats, disinterested in empire-building as well as in democracy, and concerned only with the continuous functioning of the political and economic system. 

By engaging in a large-scale war he could not quickly win — or win at all — Putin has transferred all the real power to the military-security wing. 

The people like former FSB director Nikolai Patrushev now effectively govern Russia. They have taken over the political sphere, they have captured even the sphere of culture, where blacklists of undesirable actors, directors or performers have already been made and have left, for the time being, only the area of the economy in the hands of the technocrats. 

The siloviki want the West to know that they mean to go all the way, hence the nuclear threats in space, combined by the elimination of Navalny, all taking place during the Munich Security Conference. 

The thugs who now rule Russia are feeling quite confident; they are emboldened by the polling from the United States, which gives Donald Trump a slight advantage over President Joe Biden, and by the fact that much-needed military aid to Ukraine, currently awaiting the approval of the US House of Representatives, has been postponed on the urging of Trump and his allies in the Republican Party. 

ADVERTISEMENT

The siloviki believe that victory is within their grasp. Eliminating Navalny is a clear sign of their confidence.

Between a rock and a hard place, the choice has to be made anyway

In the death of Navalny, however, Russia has gained yet another symbol of democratic martyrdom, as much as it lacks democratic opposition leaders. 

Better yet, it lacks an organised and unified liberal opposition. The million-ruble question is: who is next? Who will step up as the leader of the anti-totalitarian movement in Russia? 

The answer right now might as well be no one — at least in the few years of totalitarianism that are still ahead for Russia. Only the tawing process of transition from totalitarianism and back to authoritarianism can provide enough liberties for the opposition to once again start to form. 

That transition — as undemocratic as it will inevitably be — will most likely come from the top, and in order for that to be induced, Putin and the siloviki, who hold all the power in Russia, must hit a wall in Ukraine. 

ADVERTISEMENT

This has to be a wall made not only of Ukrainian bravery and sacrifice, but of Western resolve to contain Moscow’s aggression before it engulfs more of Europe, and, eventually, most of the continent. 

The choice which now has to be made, first and foremost by the White House and Brussels, is not whether to appease the Kremlin or go into an open conflict with it.

The choice is either to stop Russia in Ukraine or be forced to fight a resurgent Moscow in defence of Eastern Europe as a whole.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. Formerly, he was a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

ADVERTISEMENT

Source link

#Navalny #latest #martyr #Russian #totalitarianism

The unexpected upside of Russia’s liberal candidate who was not to be

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Boris Nadezhdin’s role was to be a certified loser. Yet, as hopeless and uninspiring of a candidate he was, he unwittingly gave Russian liberals hope, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

After a week of what could be described as peak cheap court drama at its finest, the last liberal potential candidate for the Russian presidential election, Boris Nadezhdin, has been finally rejected by the country’s Central Electoral Commission.

In a tense administrative showdown of the opening week of February, Nadezhdin first submitted 104,700 signatures necessary for his candidature to be approved, since he isn’t running as a representative of a parliamentary political party. 

The Central Electoral Commission, the bureaucratic body which formally decides whether aspiring candidates fulfil the criteria to run in the elections or not, then went on to scrap 9,147 of those, or more than the legally allowed 5% of invalid signatures. 

Nadezhdin appealed the decision, but the bureaucrats ultimately rejected his complaint on Thursday.

In the end, there will be just four candidates running for the post of Russia’s supreme leader, all of them representatives of parliamentary parties, which are eligible to run by default. 

All other candidates, except Vladimir Putin himself, had their hopes dashed by the Central Electoral Commission. 

Putin’s official rivals for the 17 March election will be LDPR’s Leonid Slutsky, Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party, and New People’s Vladislav Davankov.

All of them constitute what is known as loyal opposition; in other words, they’re window dressing, as Putin can’t be the only candidate, it’s against the Constitution and the optics are rather bad. 

The message out of the Kremlin to Russians is, the bare bones of democratic pretence must be maintained.

Hardly the leader we need

On the other hand, Boris Nadezhdin himself was not what one would call a leader of the liberal or any kind of opposition by any means at all. 

Over the years, he has repeatedly participated in political talk shows broadcast on Russian federal TV channels, as a handpicked representative of what was supposed to be “liberal opposition”. 

He was on the infamous Vladimir Solovyov’s show more than once, whose rants can only be compared to those of Hans Fritzsche, the Nazi star radio host, later convicted of war crimes by the Nuremberg tribunal. 

Nadezhdin also frequently took part in other federal TV talk shows such as Pyotr Tolstoy’s “Time Will Tell” and was a guest on Yevgeny Popov’s and Olga Skabeeva’s “60 Minutes” program. 

All of the “journalists” mentioned above went on to join Putin’s United Russia party and renounced any semblance of journalist integrity. The democratic world has also sanctioned them in the meantime.

Nadezhdin’s political background is in line with his previous, but more successful colleagues from the ranks of Putin’s technocratic elite of today, such as the influential post-Soviet mainstay Sergey Kiriyenko, known as one of Boris Yeltsin’s former prime ministers. 

Nadezhdin was also a member of Boris Nemtsov’s team at the end of the 1990s when the liberal wing of Russia’s political system had its last hurrah. 

Nemtsov was assassinated late into Putin’s era, refusing to submit to autocratic rule, like many of his peers did. 

Nadezhdin went on to change several mainstream liberal parties in Russia while Putin was already in power. 

ADVERTISEMENT

He worked with Putin’s former Minister of Finance Alexey Kudrin and took part in the primaries of Putin’s United Russia party in 2015 but was defeated. Then, in 2021, he unsuccessfully ran in the parliamentary elections as the representative of the Just Russia party, which was by then an openly alt-right political organisation completely loyal to Putin.

Supporting the platform, not the face on the posters

In essence, Nadezhdin as a political figure bears no importance. Putin’s administration could’ve picked anyone out of several other characters ready to perfectly fill his shoes as representatives of the loyal liberal opposition. 

What matters for Russian society and bears mentioning is the effect which Nadezhin’s failed candidacy achieved — an effect which even Nadezhdin himself couldn’t have hoped for.

In another twist of cynical irony, his last name happens to contain the word “hope”. And all of a sudden, traces of hope appeared, albeit briefly.

For the first time since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian liberal public dared to show its collective face on the streets of the big cities. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Long queues of people who wanted to give their signatures and show support for his candidacy could be seen as early as the beginning of this year.

This was mainly achieved by the real liberal opposition, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Alexey Navalny’s associates, unexpectedly standing behind his candidacy. 

From then on, it didn’t matter in the slightest whether Nadezhdin was coopted by Putin’s administration or not; he still ran on the anti-war and pro-democracy platform and the large number of people supporting him did so because of the issues and not out of affection for him as a political leader. 

Maybe hope does die last after all

What came to be was the next best thing to protest in Russia’s middle-class circles. 

For the first time, in the middle of totalitarian Russia, liberals took to the streets, stood next to each other, likely conversed on political issues and no force could scare them away. This is a big deal for Russia’s atomised big-city segment of society.

ADVERTISEMENT

Liberal support for Nadezhdin grew so much, that he was realistically seen as a runner-up in the coming elections, an outcome Putin’s administration did not want to see happening. 

Nadezhdin’s role was to be a certified loser, garnering no more than 1-2% of votes, thus demonstrating to fragmented and disenchanted Russian liberals that they were isolated and few in numbers. 

The snowball effect of grassroots support for Nadezhdin annihilated the premise of Putin’s team, so when the first independent polling results came out, giving Nadezhdin a projected share of no less than 10%, it was clear that his project was to be cancelled and his candidacy refused. 

By then, however, it was already too late to erase the positive social effect Nadezhdin’s candidacy had caused. 

The decision of the Russian liberal opposition turned out to be the right one, for a change. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Nadezhdin had achieved what they could not. He brought Russian liberals out of their kitchens, where serious matters in Russian society are commonly discussed, and into the open. 

And as hopeless and uninspiring of a candidate as he was, he unwittingly gave Russian liberals hope.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. He was formerly a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

Source link

#unexpected #upside #Russias #liberal #candidate

Russia’s three wars have made peace with Putin impossible

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Putin’s regime is an existential threat to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will not stop, just as Hitler did not stop when he captured the Sudetenland. Putin will go further and won’t rest until he destroys the Western world, Leonid Gozman writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

Hopes for Kyiv’s relatively quick victory have not materialised and the war between Russia and Ukraine has dragged on — though this is certainly not the fault of the Ukrainians. 

The war is becoming polarising and demands for negotiations and compromise are increasingly frequent.

Those hoping for a compromise with Vladimir Putin do not fully understand the nature of his regime or him as a person.

Compromise with Putin is impossible, and any peace agreement will not lead to peace, but rather to a temporary ceasefire that Putin will use to build up his forces for a new attack.

No peace with someone who wants you dead

Putin started this war not to resolve a specific issue — there were no unsolvable contradictions between Russia and Ukraine — but to destroy Ukraine as a subject of politics, language, and culture. 

He repeatedly stated that there was never such a thing as Ukraine to begin with, that it was “invented” by Vladimir Lenin, that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, and that the Ukrainian language does not exist. 

He believes it. In Putin’s mind, destroying Ukraine is not at all aggression, but a return to a normal order. 

That is why Ukrainians can’t agree with Putin — or as Golda Meir said, “You cannot negotiate peace with someone who has come to kill you.”

Since it would be politically inviable to openly declare the destruction of Ukraine as the goal of the invasion, the Russian authorities constantly changed their war aims.

They first aimed to ensure the right to speak Russian in Donbas — which no one encroached on — then destroy biological laboratories designed to make Russian women infertile, allegedly created in Ukraine with the help of the United States. 

After came “denazification” and finally, in Dmitry Medvedev’s words, the fight against Satan. 

Putin finds your lack of gratitude disturbing

It is true: today, Russian propaganda does not talk about the goals of the war at all. For Russia, war is no longer the means, but a natural state.

The war with Ukraine is only one of three that Putin’s regime wages. The second one, no less important, is the war for the revival of the Empire. 

While the Kremlin has been preparing for it for a long time, it entered the active phase in 2008, when Russia captured 20% of Georgia’s territory. 

Putin, of course, does not seek to occupy all the countries formerly part of the Russian Empire, but he does demand special rights and control over their foreign policy. 

Russia takes every opportunity to destabilise its neighbours, from utilising the Russian diaspora to bribing politicians and organsing coups. 

Putin will never give up his “rights” to the Empire. He believes that any territory where Russian soldiers shed blood should be part of Russia or its sphere of influence, and people living there should be eternally grateful to Russia. 

The lack of gratitude angers and makes Putin even more aggressive.

ADVERTISEMENT

Risking global war to gain global respect

However, the main war for Putin is the one with the West, where Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and threats to Poland are just episodes. 

According to the Russian leadership, the West (or “Anglo-Saxons”) has always humiliated Russia, seeking to conquer or slow down Russia’s development. 

The motive of humiliation or lack of respect is fundamentally important to Putin. And, even when Russia did not yet exist, this was not so much of an inter-country struggle but a spiritual confrontation between the world’s good, embodied by Russia and the Russians, and evil, that is the West. 

Now, just as before, so the story goes, the West hates Russia, seeking to undermine its unity and destroy the country as a whole, and is ready to risk a global war for this.

The idea of a global confrontation with European civilization did not emerge immediately after Putin became president. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Putin began as a Westerniser and perceived integration of Russia into the “First World” as his mission. 

That did not work out, but Putin also did not strive to join the modern West, but rather the West of the Yalta Conference times, when the great powers could divide the planet among themselves. 

And since returning to the past turned out to be unattainable, Putin, while remaining in G8, began to pursue an anti-Western policy, hoping to lead the world’s anti-American sentiment. 

But that did not work out either: neither China, Turkey, nor Iran accepted him as the leader. That was the time when the wars began: Putin decided to gain global respect and recognition with military force.

The reign of failure and indifference

Putin needs this war for both domestic and psychological reasons. 

ADVERTISEMENT

His reign has been plagued by failures: the demographic situation is worsening, the technological gap is increasing, the quality of life is falling, and it is not possible to solve any of Russia’s most pressing problems. 

Contrary to popular belief, there is no support for his policies or him personally. 

People are indifferent; they have come to terms with Putin and his actions and do not feel any enthusiasm about it. 

The defeats at the front or what is declared as victories do not provoke a public reaction, and neither did Putin’s ICC arrest warrant or the drone attack on the Kremlin. 

The war with no end allows Putin to suppress discontent — we were attacked, the enemy is on the doorstep — and not think about the failures, instead plunging into the world of illusions completely, where he has been in recent years.

ADVERTISEMENT

Peace on Earth can only be achieved if the Putin regime is destroyed

For Putin, peace is impossible. The task of maintaining control over Russia and preserving self-respect is solved only in conditions of war. 

Peace will make the population realise the meaninglessness of their sacrifices and, most importantly, give elites an opportunity to express, in one form or another, their dissatisfaction with Putin’s policies, catastrophic both for them and the country but beneficial to Putin and his entourage. 

The dissatisfaction of the elites has been accumulating for years. Therefore, no matter what the costs are, Putin will continue the war, using any negotiations as a respite. 

This is exactly what Adolf Hitler would have done if, at the end of the war, the anti-Hitler coalition had agreed to a peace agreement with him. 

He could no longer help but fight; a stable peace meant the end of his power. It is the same for Putin. 

ADVERTISEMENT

He does not need peace, but only a truce. And peace on Earth, as in 1945, can only be achieved if the regime of Vladimir Putin is destroyed.

Therefore, the supply of Western weapons and financial assistance to Ukraine is not charity, but self-defence. 

The Putin system is an existential threat to European civilization. If Russia wins in Ukraine, it will not stop, just as Hitler did not stop when he captured the Sudetenland. 

Putin will go further and won’t rest until he destroys the Western world.

Leonid Gozman, Ph.D. is a Russian liberal politician, psychologist and political scientist, and a professor at Lomonosov Moscow State University in Moscow until 2020. Now in exile, Gozman was declared a “foreign agent” in 2022, then arrested and spent a month in prison for opposing the war in Ukraine.

ADVERTISEMENT

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

Source link

#Russias #wars #peace #Putin #impossible

Russian opposition leader Navalny goes missing as Putin seeks re-election

Post By World , , , , ,

Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not appear at a scheduled court hearing on Monday and has not been seen or heard from in 15 days. Amid speculation that he has been secretly moved to another prison or is seriously unwell, the UN has raised concerns of an “enforced disappearance” that would coincide with the launch of President Vladimir Putin’s campaign for re-election in March 2024. 

In the Russian region of Vladimir, 100 kilometres east of Moscow, Alexei Navalny was scheduled to appear in court on Monday, if only via video link from the detention centre where he has been held since 2021. 

Judges were to hear seven cases against the opposition leader, who is serving an almost 30-year sentence after being found guilty of crimes including fraud, slander and extremism.  

When he failed to appear in court, the judges decided to push back the hearings “until Navalny’s whereabouts are ‘established’,” his press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, posted on social media platform X.

She said Navalny’s team contacted nearly 200 pre-trial detention centres in Russia hoping to track down the opposition leader, but without success. 

‘Enforced disappearance’

Navalny’s team last heard from him on December 5. Lawyers were refused access to see him in prison on December 6 with no explanation, Yarmysh said. 

But Navalny’s failure to appear even at a court hearing has ratcheted up international fears over his wellbeing.

“I am greatly concerned that the Russian authorities will not disclose Mr. Navalny’s whereabouts and wellbeing for such a prolonged period of time which amounts to enforced disappearance,” said Mariana Katzarova, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Russian Federation, in a December 18 statement.    

Navalny’s disappearance seems conveniently timed. Putin on December 8 announced his candidature for Russia’s presidential election on March 17, 2024, and is widely expected to win. 

Putin oversaw changes to the constitutional in 2021 that allow him to run for two more six-year terms, meaning he could stay in power until 2036. He is already the longest-serving Kremlin leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who died in 1953.

Navalny has risked his life by positioning himself as Putin’s most vocal critic in an increasingly repressive Russia. He survived being poisoned with novichok – a group of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union – in 2020 and spent months recuperating in Germany.

Another Putin critic and leader of the Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, died in a private plane crash two months after launching an aborted march on Moscow.

While there are legitimate fears over Navalny’s safety, another likely reason for his disappearance may be more mundane. 

“It is very common for prisoners to disappear for several weeks while being transferred [between prisons],” said Oleg Kozlovsky, Russia specialist at Amnesty International. “The most likely hypothesis is that he has been transferred to a special colony somewhere far from where he was held until now.” 

A 2017 Amnesty International report explains that the size of Russia and the remote location of penal colonies “means that prisoners must be transported over great distances” during transfers, with journeys often taking a month or more.

Prisoners are typically moved between colonies on dedicated trains without being told where they are going, and “in conditions that often amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment”, the Amnesty report found.

Carriages are overcrowded and passengers can lack access to sleeping spaces and toilets for the duration of the journey. “Conditions are reportedly worse than in normal cells in pre-trial detention which are worse than in correctional colonies and below international standards,” the rights group wrote.

‘Special regime’

Navalny has been at risk of this type of long-distance transfer since his most recent sentencing on August 4, during which he was found guilty of “extremism”, adding 19 more years to his sentence.

His new sentence also specified a change in detention conditions, moving Navalny from the “strict regime” penal colony in Vladimir to a more secure “special regime” colony, reserved for the most dangerous prisoners.

Under special regime conditions, “there are harsher restrictions on how often you can have contact with [the] outside world, how many calls you are allowed to make and how many packages you can receive”, Kozlovsky said.

“He will also be in stricter isolation and, of course, much further away from Moscow, meaning it’s going to be even tougher for his lawyer and family to see him.”

It will also be much more difficult for Navalny to continue his vocal opposition to Putin. Even from a “strict regime” prison, Navalny was able to communicate with a global audience and mount an opposition to the Russian leader.

In a video released on Navaly’s website on December 7, he urged Russians to vote for any candidate “except Vladimir Putin”.

“The current crackdown on both leading dissidents and grassroots activists is so severe that it would seem logical that the authorities are seeking to restrict Alexei Navalny’s access to the outside world as much as possible,” said Morvan Lallouet, a specialist in contemporary Russia at the University of Kent and co-author of “Navalny: Putin’s Nemesis, Russia’s Future?”

“It is fairly amazing that he has been able to get so much out in today’s Russia,” agreed Stephen Hall, a Russian politics expert at the University of Bath.

“My bet would be that someone in the administration has decided this was a good moment to transfer Navalny and therefore he will be missing for around a month.”

Health concerns 

Navalny’s failure to appear at his court hearing has raised new concerns over his health. He has reportedly been kept in unsanitary conditions and repeatedly confined to isolation cells, which, his team says, has taken a toll on his health.

In a rare show of defiance, more than 200 Russian doctors signed an open letter in January calling on Putin to “stop abusing” Navalny in prison by “deliberately” harming his health.

In early December, Navalny’s team said he collapsed in the solitary cell in which he was being held and needed an IV to recover.

It is possible that his disappearance means that Russian authorities “are trying to hide a deterioration in Navalny’s health”, said Lallouet.

“[But] we are staying optimistic and hoping that he is just being transferred between penal colonies.”

This article was adapted from the original in French. 



Source link

#Russian #opposition #leader #Navalny #missing #Putin #seeks #reelection

In today’s Russia, ‘god of war’ Putin is more popular than ever

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Originally, Putin was picked as a future puppet because he fit the bill — the strongman persona was exactly what the doctor had ordered. Then he ended up cutting loose from his patrons, keeping the persona and the power he accrued all for himself, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

As Russia prepares for the presidential election scheduled for March of next year, Vladimir Putin is playing a game of will-he-won’t-he and is yet to announce his bid for reelection.

Yet, the incumbent president’s apparent hesitance is nothing more than a charade, and — bar an earth-shattering act-of-God event — he is set to rule Russia for another six-year term. And, as illogical as it may seem to outside observers, the ongoing full-scale invasion of Ukraine has only helped solidify his ironclad grasp on power.

In fact, the entirety of Putin’s carefully crafted political image in Russia is based upon the notion that he is an unbreakable masculine god of war, against whose onslaught no opponent can be left standing. 

This is the core of his political persona. His other social disguises are reserved for various echelons of power within Russia, the inner and outer circle, as well as foreign heads of state, be they antagonists or partners (in crime).

This one, however, is what Putin wears specifically for the Russian public, who seem to be willing to back him to the hilt yet again, no questions asked.

A byproduct of times of chaos

The sole fact that Putin didn’t choose to base his political persona on personal charisma, administrative shrewdness or intellectual prowess, was partially determined by the late Boris Yeltsin era in which he managed to backstab his way up the corrupt political ladder. 

It was an era of chaos, not because of liberal and market reforms, but because the reformists themselves stopped halfway with the changes, once they were convinced that political and economic power was firmly within their grasp. 

The changes in Russia at the time were issued by fiat from the very top, and there was no great grassroots opposition political movement for democracy which could force reforms. 

As such, once the political power was distributed and economic wealth acquired, it was not the opponents, but the initial proponents of reforms who stopped them dead in their tracks. 

On the other hand, it was a period not of idealistic democracy in Russia, but of the weakness of the federal centre of power. Liberty, a byproduct of this state of play, was never truly desired; it had to be tolerated.

The Chechen cause turns into an existential threat

The two Chechen Wars gave both Yeltsin and Putin a purpose. As the setup went, Russia was in danger and they would fight to protect it. 

The truth was, however, that during the Soviet era, the Chechen people were subjected to one of the most horrendous state crimes — they were forcefully relocated to Central Asia en masse. 

The elderly and the newborns were crammed inside cattle trains and shipped far to the east. Many of the most fragile social groups lost their lives during the trip itself. 

Only with the decay of central power in Moscow could the Chechens return to their ancestral land. Thus, the Chechen struggle for independence was a logical consequence of Russian rule over the territory once the Soviet Union was gone for good. 

But, the Moscow overlords of the Yeltsin and Putin variety opted to turn the Chechen cause into an existential threat to Russia itself, much like it was done with Ukraine almost two decades later.

This is how, by the very nature of the already set war path, Putin’s political persona was streamlined into the war dictator we know, and loath, today. 

The planned puppet’s strongman persona

There are many speculations — set to remain long after Putin leaves this world — about the apartment bombings in September 1999 blamed on the government in Grozny, which provided justification for the Second Chechen War in the eyes of the Russian public. 

The fact is that the Russian central government already chose war as a cohesive political instrument in order to achieve total control and stifle nascent Russian federalism even before Putin was in the spotlight. 

ADVERTISEMENT

And whether or not the terrorist attacks were a setup, Putin was already picked by the Yeltsin clan and the few oligarchs who wielded enough power to make the choice of who the next president of Russia would be, among them Boris Berezovsky (who was later assassinated in Britain) and Yeltsin’s son-in-law, Valentin Yumashev (who remained loyal).

The war path strategy of Yeltsin invigorated once more the heavily battered security apparatus, which terrorized the country during the Soviet era. 

Putin was picked as a future puppet, chosen because he fit the bill — the strongman persona was exactly what the doctor had ordered. 

It wasn’t only Putin who needed a war; the reborn Russian autocracy did, too. Maybe it was set up but the FSB itself or perhaps it was really the rogue Chechen Islamic extremists, not under the control of the Grozny government, who provided the needed casus belli. The difference would not amount to much in the eyes of the Russian public already sold on the narrative, anyway.

The necessity of war as an instrument of rule was already in place. The Second Chechen War shaped Putin’s political image to such an extent that he could never transition beyond it, even if he wanted to. 

ADVERTISEMENT

From Chechnya to Transnistria, and then onto Syria

In the end, the narrative was highly effective, and it gave the impoverished Russian masses the feeling of collective power once more.

Together with the terrorist attacks in Russian cities which went on for years as a backdrop to the Chechen Wars, the Kremlin’s spiel also helped rally the people around the tough paternalistic figure Putin had become.

In the meantime, Putin ended up cutting loose from his patrons, keeping the persona and the power he accrued all for himself. 

Then, in 2008, came the Georgian War — a small and quick victory for the Russian forces overshadowing the Georgian army many times over. This was a turning point as it constituted a foreign war, much more direct and bigger than Yeltsin’s meddling in Moldova’s Transnistria years back. 

Russia was formally an empire once more. Further encouraged by stable oil prices, which steadily filled the coffers of the Russian state, Putin was at the peak of his actual popularity — not the hollow one he has today when any alternative is practically outlawed.

ADVERTISEMENT

It was the Syrian adventure, much like the 19th-century colonial interventions of European powers in the region, that put Russia back on the global map. Together with the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the military aggression in the Donbas region, it revitalised Russia’s image as a military superpower.

The mask might have cracked, but the war dictator will prevail

During Putin’s late period, his image began to crack, and not only because he was unable to achieve a decisive victory against Ukraine in 2014. 

He was in power for too long, the fast economic growth was over, and the semblance of basic political freedoms was beginning to disappear. Ukraine had become a dual factor for Putin — it was perceived as a threat to the stability of the regime if left unchecked, and yet, it provided a great opportunity to strengthen Putin’s rule if it was quickly overpowered.

A new war, a “great war”, one that would go down in Russia’s history, would mark Putin’s legacy and cement his power within his lifetime.

After nineteen months of war, the victory never came, despite this the regime had found a new way of prolonging its stay in power — a forever war of lower intensity.

ADVERTISEMENT

In a way, a war with just enough resources committed to keep it going, but not enough to cause civil unrest. The Western leaders, from their perspective, see this as a containment strategy; denying Russia victory, draining its resources, but not attempting to provide enough resources to defeat it out of fear of what might then follow — a chaotic breakup of Russia, total war, or even nuclear holocaust.

At the same time, Putin, and his inner circle, see all this as an opportunity to bring back totalitarian rule in Russia itself, securing their position for years to come, all the while hoping that Ukraine would eventually crumble under the pressure. 

And Putin the war dictator, albeit battered, will prevail. 

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. Formerly, he was a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

ADVERTISEMENT

Source link

#todays #Russia #god #war #Putin #popular

The ultimate short guide on living (and surviving) under Putin

Post By World , , , , ,

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent in any way the editorial position of Euronews.

Leave, and if you haven’t yet, make plans to do so. In Russia, all of the previously eroded freedoms are now completely gone, Aleksandar Đokić writes.

ADVERTISEMENT

During the Stalinist era, when millions suffered under an arbitrary, totalitarian rule, there were only two useful bits of advice one had to give to those with ties to the Soviet empire. 

One, if you’ve managed to escape the clutches of the Soviet communists, never return. Two, if you’re still trapped there, find a way to make a break for it. 

The machinery of repression, put in place by Vladimir Lenin and greatly expanded by his unsolicited successor Joseph Stalin, protected nobody from its potential grasp. 

Its totalitarian nature was embodied in an overbearing state apparatus that wanted to meddle in almost every aspect of human existence. In other words, it attempted to nationalise even the private aspects of life.

There was no protection of the law and no such thing as independent institutions. Everything was just a paper-mâché scenery for the state-organised terror campaign which did not come to a halt even during World War II. 

Top-down prescribed social behaviour, which would all you an individual citizen to remain out of danger, didn’t exist during this period, either. 

One could be a member of the working class or a peasant, without a clear interest in politics, without being involved in any kind of organised struggle against the regime, and still end up in the Gulag. 

One could be atheist, agnostic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or Buddhist, and still find themselves imprisoned. 

One could even be a fervent communist — a card-carrying member of the Party ever since the 1917 October Revolution and the subsequent Civil War — and still lose all his privileges and status.

Echoes of traumas past

Today, if you were to befriend a person living in Russia or of Russian roots, most of them would have stories of repressed family members they could share with you — illustrating the sheer scale of this unique, ever-present and widespread transgenerational social trauma. 

Just a year and a half ago, it seemed that this kind of nightmare would not take hold in Russia again, despite the fact that the oppressive tendencies of the Kremlin never truly went away. 

The root of this belief was found in the fact that even the communist leaders who came after Stalin did not attempt to emulate the totalitarianism of his era. A new one-sided social contract doled out from the top gave way to the gulag after his death: stay out of politics and politics won’t bother you. 

While no state official asked the citizens how free the society they wanted to live in should be, it was certainly a relief compared to the previous system of sheer terror. In some ways, it signified a type of progress, despite the Soviet Union and, later, Russia being light years away from a full-fledged democracy.

What has Putin done to his own country?

Many Russia watchers believed the same type of social contract was set in place in the Putin era prior to February 2022.

With Putin, however, there was never any pretense of a social contract to speak of. It would be more fair to call it a dictate, stipulating unwritten desirable social norms or what the state wanted to see from its citizens. 

Putin’s arrival at the top of Russian politics created a mirage of a free market — as it would later become painfully clear, concepts are seldom really fully implemented in Russia — some free press, a bit of free thought and even free elections, albeit only locally. 

Ambivalence towards dictates is no surprise in modern Russian society. The last time the Russian nation actually chose sides on a massive scale was when the central provinces picked the Bolsheviks over the Whites in a civil war waged some hundred years ago. 

Back then, the biggest part of the Russian nation — other nations and ethnic groups of the empire were unwillingly caught in the whirlwind of war and destruction — opted for what they were promised by Lenin: bread, land and peace. 

ADVERTISEMENT

The Bolsheviks didn’t deliver on any of these promises — there were recurring famines that lasted for decades, the land was collectivised, and the rule of terror turned into an eternal war against the population. 

Nonetheless, the Russian nation still believed it had a partial contract with the state — one of justice and equality against feudal autocracy — even though the contract was never completely fulfilled by the Kremlin.

Stalin’s spectre haunting today’s Russia?

In all instances that followed Lenin’s rule, the Russian nation was further made to accept a fait accompli. 

And for the average person, given the history of state-organised violence and repression that marked Russia’s history through many of its iterations, Putin’s dictate didn’t seem all that bad altogether. 

Whether we go by the maxim “power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely” and conclude that Putin and his confidants changed somewhere along the way, or if we pick the hypothesis of the “strategic plan” — the great conflict was always in Putin’s sights, he simply needed decades to prepare for it — the fact remains that the pre-2022 Russia and the one we have today are fundamentally different in nature. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Putin’s Russia prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine was authoritarian and more so as the years went by. The Russia of today, however, is on the totalitarian path. 

The level and various methods and ways of repression cannot be compared to Stalin’s, but their arbitrary nature is once again haunting the citizens of Russia.

Leave or make plans to do so

The guide about how to survive under the later stages of Putinism would be identical to the one explaining how to make it under Stalin: leave, and if you haven’t yet, make plans to do so. In Russia, all of the previously eroded freedoms are now completely gone anyway. 

Kirill Martynov, the editor-in-chief of the Novaya Gazeta Europe, summed up the current state of Russian political system in one sentence in his comment on the upcoming presidential elections: “Anyone who suggests that the opposition should unite and nominate their own candidate, must keep in mind that such a person is actually being called upon to sacrifice himself.” 

Today, even those with no political ties to any opposition group can still be charged for a random comment left online years ago — the censorship laws in Russia are retroactive. 

ADVERTISEMENT

Giving up on any kind of individual social initiative is not enough to not be indicted for treason, “discrediting the army” or being a supporter of “Nazism”. 

Protest, even in its smallest or banal forms, can get you sent to a remote penitentiary, where you’d be forced to serve your time in inhumane conditions together with the worst criminals in the country.

A suitcase and a ticket out are still a much more appealing option.

Aleksandar Đokić is a Serbian political scientist and analyst with bylines in Novaya Gazeta. Formerly, he was a lecturer at RUDN University in Moscow.

At Euronews, we believe all views matter. Contact us at [email protected] to send pitches or submissions and be part of the conversation.

Source link

#ultimate #short #guide #living #surviving #Putin