Levada Center Polling on Putin's Crap List

[BillyB]

Some of you never liked the Levada Center's polls since they show Putin has tons of support from Russians. I always believed they were independent enough from government and trusted their polls to show what truly is popular opinion. Their latest polls show sliding support for Putin and the governing party, United Russia, weeks before an election. The Russian government has designated the Levada Center a "foreign agent(spy)" which means they will have to shut down it's polling operations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/06/world/europe/russia-vladimir-v-putin-levada-center-polling-duma-united-russia.html?_r=0

[BillyB]

Snowden speaks out against the foreign agent label applied to Levada Center and more. He's wising up to how Russia operates. I don't see Putin letting him live in Russia for the rest of his life. I'm not sure if he gets to live the rest of his life the way he's talking. The new laws in Russia seems to be clamping down on people's rights. Could be they have something big planned that isn't going to be popular.

http://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-08/snowden-is-turning-into-a-liability-for-putin

[mendeleyev]

The folk at Levada are quite ethical and honest. You have hit the nail on the head that it is the latest poll numbers Levada released that has painted a bulls-eye on the organization's backside.

They do contract work and that means billing and invoicing foreign clients. They also sell/share polling technology with other groups, some of them are outside of Russia. One could just as easily label Gazprom or Russian Railways as foreign agents for simply providing services and making money outside of Russia's borders.

As Levada was scheduled to be part of the election monitoring process later this money, this is very convenient timing the Kremlin to sideline them now.