Trial of anti-Putin figure Alex Navalny ends

[mendeleyev]

Sir, what do we really know about Navalny?  This guy could be the next President of Russia how do we know this guy isn't a Morsi when Mubarak was not that bad.

Thankfully he's no Morsi. If Russians are looking for the perfect Messiah, sorry but Peter the Great is long dead.

Navalny is a well educated young man but therein lies his chief perceived flaw--one of his three University degrees is from Yale in the USA and the Kremlin has done a good job of planting the seeds of doubt by claiming he was trained as a CIA counter agent during his time at Yale. That would hurt him seriously in the present anti-American climate.

He is a member of the РПР-ПАРНАС (Republican Party of Russia) which is the most liberal free-markets, free press, open economy, limited government type of political group in Russia. Formerly he was a member of the Yabloko (Apple) party.



Russia could do a lot worse--the Communist party or the ultra right wing Left Front of Sergei Udaltsov, for example. Udaltsov's mother was a Communist terror monger in her day, more than a few citizens died at her bidding and the hard core younger Udaltsov seems to be bred from the same stock.

On the other hand, those who parrot the lie that there is no one in the opposition fit to run a country, do so out of either prejudice or ignorance.

Opposition leaders with possible credentials:

- Boris Nemtsov is a name that pops up often. He was a former deputy Prime Minister for President Putin and could run a government.

- Alexei Kudrin, Putin's long-time and former Minister of the Treasury is credited with guiding Russia through the world financial crisis. He is now aligned with the opposition.

- Mikhail Kasyanov was Prime Minister of Russia from 2000-2004, and prior to that the Minister of Finance/Treasury. Formerly a Putin ally, he is now an opposition leader as a member of the Russian Republican Party.

- Andrey Illarionov is the former economic adviser to President Putin and a trained economist who left Russia. He now works for the Cato Institute in Washington, DC but would be a brilliant candidate to lift Russia out of her economic dependence on natural resources.

- Vladimir Kara-Murza is a television journalist and former aide to deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov. Educated at Cambridge, he is a member of the Russian Republican Party and a popular and charismatic member of the opposition.

- Grigory Yavlinsky is ethnic Ukrainian and was deputy Chairman of the Soviet Economy Ministry during the closing days of the CCCP. He wanted to lead the country into the 20th Century with a free-market economy and democratic elections but by the time he had the authority, things had already spun badly out of control and the Union broke apart. He is a member of the liberal Yabloko (Apple) party.

- Vladimir Bukovsky is a writer/journalists and prominent opposition speaker. He was imprisoned in the Soviet Gulags for twelve years during the Soviet period for smuggling to the West reports of Soviet psychiatric hospitals and forced "re-education" camps. In 2007 he was drafted to run in the 2008 election for president but the Central Election Commission ruled that his application was "incomplete."

- Gennady Gudkov served with Putin the KGB, the FSB and then was chairman of Putin's United Russia party. He quit over what he viewed as Putin's drive to dismantle democratic institutions and is now a rival politician and then ran successfully to serve in the Duma for an opposition party. He was ousted in 2012 because he owned businesses and the Kremlin decided that Duma deputies shouldn't be business owners.

- Dmitry Gudkov, son of Gennady (see above) is a current member of the Duma (Parliament) for the party, A Just Russia. He has been very active in leading opposition marches.

- Ilya Ponomarev, a leader of the A Just Russia and current member of the Duma. He was formerly an official of the Communist Party and that is a drawback as are his close ties to the nationalistic Left Front movement. He was also an official of Yukos LOil, but since he wasn't interested in running for President there was no need to put him in jail at the time.

- Andrey Piontkovsky is the author of several books on the Putin presidency including the best seller, Another Look Into Putin's Soul. He is one of the 34 first signatories of the online anti-Putin manifesto "Putin Must Go" if that tells you his perspective.  He is a scientist and political activist.

- Vladimir Pribylovsky is a prominent Russian historian and human rights advocate. He is author of a book about Vladimir Putin titled, "The Age of Assassins."

- Call me funny, but another possibility is writer/poet/journalist Dmitry Bykov. Some would discount him because of his profession (biographer of Boris Pasternak and Maxim Gorky) but he is quite the orator. In Russia's Presidential parliamentary system the Prime Minister and Duma really run the country day to day (on paper). Absent Putin, the system might actually work as designed.

It is my understanding that the protests against Putin following his re-election were sponsored by the Communists and that they are the only viable opposition party in Russia.

A very convenient talking point for the Commies right up to the point when one realizes it isn't completely accurate.





The Communist Party, at one time outlawed, is the single largest opposition party simply because all the liberal democratic groups are broken up into factions. They currently hold 92 of the 450 seats in the Duma.

Could the Communists slip back into power should there be a crisis in Russia? Sure, just like Lenin stole the revolution in 1917-1918, they could. But this time it would break up the country because the Communists just can't overcome their Stalinist history without immediately turning to brute force.

Do many Russians and observers agree with me that Medvedev is a weak man - a placeholder who enjoys no popular support aside from Putin's confirmed belief that Medvedev is no threat.  I am told that he is a weak man and that he gets along good with Barack.

No.
No.
No.
No.

 

He is a keenly intelligent man who mentored under the man who primarily drafted the Russian Federation Constitution. He is a good lawyer in his own right. He is also a man who never wanted to be President nor Prime Minister but who has the absolute trust, and this has nothing to do with weakness, of Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin doesn't tolerate weakness. That is one of the reason he literally despises Barrack Obama. Vladimir smell weakness and enjoys toying with it and exploiting it just as a wolf loves chicken. If Medvedev was weak, Putin would have never insisted that his college companion and fellow St Petersburg government attorney move to Moscow to be a part of Putin's first presidential term.

Medvedev came close to getting the nod for a second term despite all the pundits who pontificate without knowledge would have you believe. There were some key factors in Putin's sudden decision, and yes it was sudden, to return. He could have stayed on as Prime Minister as frankly he doesn't enjoy the international diplomacy aspects of the presidency whereas Medvedev excelled at it and Russia made great strides on the world stage with Medvedev as point man. Putin liked that division of power because Russia is structured as a government where the day to day decisions reside with the Prime Minister and the Parliament. Putin was in his "zone" as Prime Minister.


Putin returned because he felt vulnerable. Three reasons included:



- First he was surprised at being booed by a young crowd at a martial arts event.

- Rumours that money had been siphoned off from charity organizations to build a secret elaborate palace on the Black Sea for Mr. Putin angered Russians. That and rumours of Swiss bank accounts made it became necessary to sell/transfer the property but it was an embarrassment to the Putin government. Putin supposedly worried about immunity for himself should Medvedev not be able to hold onto the office for two (six year) terms.

- While president Mr. Medvedev had cultivated relationships with the opposition. They remained the opposition but Medvedev's direction was to build on a pro-democracy, open government path for Russia's future. In the end, that seemed to have spooked Mr. Putin who was and is not yet ready for that to happen.

On 16 August 2011 Mr. Putin traveled to Astrakhan for an unscheduled fishing trip on the Volga river. President Medvedev, on holiday, broke his plans and flew to meet Prime Minister Putin on the river. That day I attended a luncheon meeting in Moscow where former Soviet President Gorbachev briefed a group of business leaders, Medvedev staffers and supporters and Prime Minister deputies on economic plans a prominent think tank had designed for the Medvedev campaign. It was assumed by all in attendance, including many high level presidential and prime minster deputies that an announcement would soon be made in Medvedev's favour.

I received an urgent phone call from an associate that something more than fishing was transpiring on the Volga so quickly traveled to Astrakhan the next day. President Medvedev took part in a couple of campaign style stops along the river before returning to his Sochi vacation but aides and journalists could sense that something had changed although they two remained tight lipped. It is my belief that Mr. Putin made a decision and delivered it to Mr. Medvedev on the first day of that unplanned outing.




Those covering presidents and other leaders any length of time come to know their moods along with their strengths and weaknesses. One tries to remain as neutral as possible but you can't help but eventually respecting, or not, the individual. Some trips are busy while others have more time for interaction. I think back to a Ski trip with President Medvedev who is an excellent photographer by the way, the presidential train ride from Russia to China (see the Mendeleyev Journal of April 2011), or the every poignant moment when Mr. Medvedev took time to talk with traveling media about his faith while sitting on the bank of the Jordan River (http://russianreport.wordpress.com/2011/04/21/russian-easter-reflection-on-the-jordan-river) or spending time during the holidays (http://russianreport.wordpress.com/2011/01/12/russian-president-medvedev-spends-christmas-in-ivanovo/) as examples.


Full disclosure: I admire and respect Dmitry Medvedev and his family.

Additionally, Mrs. Medvedeva admires my wife's art and my wife admires and respects the Medvedev family. I try to stay at arm's length on that and while I would not attempt to promote my wife in such a context, their contact is outside my work sphere so I leave it that way. 

what makes Mikhail Khodorkovsky different from the oligarchs

Simple.

I have photos of the two sitting in Mr. Putin's Kremlin office like chums or respected associates, before Khodorkovsky decided to get involved in politics.

Once Khodorkovsky crossed the political line, the game changed.


Second, you have to look at the reason Khodorkovsky became interested in politics: he has a family, children, and he wanted a better future for his children than the old Wild West of rape and plunder anything of value and then leave for London.

Prime example:

The Duma has just put into practice a law called "economic amnesty."

Amnesty from what? From business corruption. So many business entrepreneurs have been put into jail that the government realizes that they've locked up the smartest and brightest just like Stalin had sent all of his top military commanders either to the firing squads or the Gulags.

The Duma, in passing the bill, admitted that so many entrepreneurs had been jailed by corrupt investigators, judges who rendered "telephone verdicts" (someone on the phone tells the judge what the verdict will be), and on trumped-up charges that somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 businessmen were in prison for simply daring to own and run a business.

So Boris Titov, the national omsbudsman of the Russian Federation has been tasked with helping the government identify prisoners who were jailed on tax charges, business fraud charges, etc, and who really don't belong in jail so that they can be granted this new "economic amnesty."

However we must remember than United Russia remains in control of the parliament and so the bill exempts from economic amnesty any businessperson who was involved in political activity. That means thatMikhail Khodorkovsky, and others like Alexei Navalny, will join him behind bars as soon as the September election for Moscow mayor is finished.

[lordtiberius]

Was the election that elected Putin to the Presidency free and fair?

[Muzh]

Is this man the next Julia Timashenko?

First, it is Yulia Tymoshenko.

Second, there is no comparison whatsoever.

This guy has been an anti corruption advocate.

Yulia has been a corruption advocate.

[mendeleyev]

Was the election that elected Putin to the Presidency free and fair?

No.

The fact is that he would have been reelected anyway, but for the purpose of appearing legitimate he needed to maintain a healthy margin of victory.

After being stung by the December outcry following the Duma elections the government installed video cams at most polling stations and made them accessible for most citizens to watch. Even that backfired as places like YouTube are full of videos showing significant voter fraud, ballot box stuffing, police escorting independent monitors out of polling stations so that they couldn't monitor ballot counting, "caravan voting" where buses of young Nashi members drove from polling station to polling station to cast multiple ballots, etc.

Then you have the issue of who paid for the United Russia campaign? The system is designed for maximum advantage to those in power.

[lordtiberius]

While the economies of Turkey, Russia and even Brazil seem to be improving, we saw anti-government protests discredit the legitimacy and in Egypt's case, overthrow of onerous regimes.  How much will what is going on in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt influence democracy activists in Russia? 

When Putin was "elected" we saw mass protests, what was the effect of those protests?  Will we see likely more protests as we approach the election? 

There comes a point where Putin cannot put everyone in jail.  How will this fact influence democracy activists and the Russian people?

How do you as a journalist reconcile your personal friendship with Mr. Dmitry Medvedev and his cozy association with Vladmir Putin and the United Russia Party?  His tweet about Navalny seems to have his fingerprints on it. 

If that was not him but an unidentified staffer, does the former President use twitter a lot?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/07/medvedevs-twitter-obscen_n_1134611.html

[lordtiberius]

As usual, thank you in advance.

I love Julia Timashenko.  I pray she will be released and that she becomes President of Ukraine.  She is great lady and fierce advocate for democracy and clean government

[mendeleyev]

How do you as a journalist reconcile your personal friendship with Mr. Dmitry Medvedev and his cozy association with Vladmir Putin and the United Russia Party?  His tweet about Navalny seems to have his fingerprints on it.

I wouldn't describe my relationship with PM Medvedev as one of personal friendship. Perhaps someday when we're both retired it may be a different story. He is an avid photographer and once in a blue moon I'll open an email to see a photo but then again he does that to others within the media pool as well. He is good at building relationships and is a very open person. That being said, one should not underestimate him either. There is a soft exterior and his character is genuine which makes him a good people person and those who meet him understand those qualities. However, like an angry Mama bear, he will act swiftly without hesitation if he felt that Russia or any of the leadership team was threatened.

He works by appointment for President Putin and the day he can't perform in that role, he'll go teach law somewhere. But as long as he serves Russia in the PM capacity, he isn't going to be disloyal to Vladimir Putin.


It is possible for a journalist to admire and respect a leader without crossing the a professional line, although that is not taught to today's journalism students. If I cross that line then I'll have surrendered the right to ask tough questions and to investigate as needed.

Sam Donaldson said of his relationship with Ronald Reagan:

Yes, I came to respect Reagan's skills as a leader, and despite what many good Republicans believe to this day, I came to like him personally.

One of the key differences between the two men is that Mr. Medvedev understands the role of an independent press and doesn't come unglued when tough questions are asked.

[mendeleyev]

does the former President use twitter a lot?

He is a techie, no question. Whereas Vladimir Putin doesn't have a computer, no cell, no GPS, and his assistant uses a typewriter in his office after discovering that the USA's NSA had access to his office communications (Putin is very much a anti-tech guy) but Medvedev can program your iphone or Android if you can't figure it out.

Mr. Putin may not be high tech but of the three dogs, the eldest and his favourite, Koni the black Lab, wears a GPS collar.She is constantly at his side, even in diplomatic meetings at the presidential residence. If security needs to track Mr. Putin down, all they have to do is get a quick read on Koni. She does not however make the helicopter rides to the new Helo pad installed inside the Kremlin. He leaves her at home on those trips.

The two men have a great relationship but have been known to yell and snap at each other. Medvedev by the way will snap right back as if it's nothing and the one irritation, beside their continual disagreements on the country's budget, is over technology. When it became clear that the NSA had access to communications that should have never "left the building" Mr. Putin then ordered old fashioned typewriters to be installed. By the way, I'm proud of our middle daughter who works for the Washington Post where you can read more about the new Kremlin typewriters.

Medvedev on the other hand has been working with super techs to button down the hatches and plug the technology holes.

[mendeleyev]

How much will what is going on in Turkey, Brazil and Egypt influence democracy activists in Russia? 

When Putin was "elected" we saw mass protests, what was the effect of those protests?  Will we see likely more protests as we approach the election? 

There comes a point where Putin cannot put everyone in jail.  How will this fact influence democracy activists and the Russian people?

I really don't know. A lot of us thought we knew in December 2011 after the Duma elections went sideways. Then there was the Putin election in March 2012 and again every rally seemed to have 20K or so in Moscow plus large crowds in other cities.

The summer of 2012 was spent in city park after city park as protest after protest filled the summer air. I spend two separate nights in jail, not arrested, but as a monitor of how prisoners were being treated. I missed being carted off one morning however when OMOH and FSB troops swept into a cafe where Western journalists were meeting for breakfast. Mrs. M had insisted that I eat at home and travel to the Centre later so I missed the excitement. No one from that group was formally charged but it was a scare tactic to toss some soft Westerners into a police truck and drive to a police station before being released.

Unless I'm mistaken, I can't imagine a large rally after the mayoral election of 8 September. However, the mayor of Moscow is akin to a Governor given Moscow's federal status and size and Moscow's mayor is more important than most governors with the exception of perhaps Tatarstan and Chechnaya where the "governors" have the title of President of their respective republics. That being said, the only factor to make this a race of importance is that Navalny is running, but even in a fair election he doesn't seem to have the votes because too many known candidates are running against Sergei Sobyanin.

What outsiders don't understand is the timing of these elections. Sobyanin was in the middle of his term and there was no need for an election this year. However he "resigned" then called snap elections for September and was quickly reappointed by Putin as "interim" mayor in the meantime. The timing caught the opposition off guard and has given them little time to organize and fund viable alternatives to Sobyanin.

To make matters more interesting, although he is running as a non-partisan independent, Sobyanin is a member of the United Russia Party. As there are campaign funding limits and official parties are not allowed to endorse candidates from other parties or to join forces, as a "non-partisan" and sole indepenedent Sobyanin has skirted those rules and therefore United Russia and several other parties loosely related to UR can and are endorsing him instead of nominating a candidate of their own. He gets the benefit of their backing and their budgets as long as he maintains an arm's length relationship, thereby multiplying available resources not accessible to opposition parties.

If one stops to read the tea leaves, it might appear that the Putin camp is setting up the same scenario for the next presidential election. A new party, The All-Russian People's Front, has named Mr. Putin as party head and he has accepted, yet he will leave Medvedev in charge of United Russia. This will set up similar loopholes in federal election rules as are being applied now in the mayoral election.

Several leading opposition figures are also in the race such as Sergei Mitrokhin of Yabloko party, Nikolai Levichev of A Just Russia and Ivan Melnikov of the Communist Party. These are notable figures who will dilute the opposition vote.

Sobyanin is a solid Putin ally so this strategy was approved by the president at the very least. With a new five year term for Sobyanin, Mr. Putin can count on a key ally in charge of Russia's most important city past the country's next presidential election in March of 2018.

[lordtiberius]

A lot of statists like the "analysts" at STRATFOR will apologize for Putin and men like him saying that the because certain entities are artificial or in Russia's case geographically ungovernable, an authoritarian like Putin is preferable than the situation we have in the Middle East where states are disintegrating into semi-soveriegn or lawless polities such as Somalia.  Is that a false dichotomy? 

[Muzh]

As usual, thank you in advance.

I love Julia Timashenko.  I pray she will be released and that she becomes President of Ukraine.  She is great lady and fierce advocate for democracy and clean government

 

[mendeleyev]

Well a weak leader would certainly lead to the demise of Russia as we know her.  A Jimmy Carter or Barrack Obama type of weakling would be a disaster for Russia just as Mikhail Gorbachev was for the Soviet Union.

To Gorbachev's credit, he was up against two masters--Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and few Communist leaders would have survived given the bankrupt condition of the CCCP at the time when facing that sort of adversary.


These are the realities of life for modern-day Russia:

- It covers 1/6 of the earth's surface but is populated by only 143 million people.

- At ten o'clock in the morning in Moscow it is already five o'clock evening in Russia's far east, making governance difficult.

- 51% of Asia sits inside Russia's borders yet her Asian neighbors China to the south has 1.4 Billion people living in a smaller area as does India with a 1.2 Billion population. World history is filled with stories of empires invading others from the desire for more living space.

The photo below shows a chess game with China making a move onto Russian territory in the East.



- Russia's two most important and strategic cities are in the 48% of the European continent that sits inside her borders. There are vast expanses east of Moscow that are near uninhabited or sparsely populated at best and many of those inhabitants are of Mongolian or Chinese ethnicity.

- Since 2011 there has been a working committee in the Duma (parliament) on ideas to move the capital to Siberia. Sergei Shoigu, governor of the Moscow region (massive area outside city limits) has suggested that the capital be moved to Russia's third-largest city of Novosibirsk which is the capital of Siberia.



As reported on Russia Today television “In general, to be frank, many people are discussing this and I am probably one of them,” Shoigu said in an interview with the Russian News Service. “I hold that we must move the capital somewhere further, to Siberia.

- Sergei Karaganov of Moscow's Higher School of Economics has argued that the capital should be moved to the opposite end of the country, Vladivostok, in order to be a part of the dynamic growth boom in that part of the East.

- In recent years Kazakhstan moved its seat of government from Almaty to Astana in order to be more centrally located and not allow the capital, which sat along the southern border, be so easily exposed to potential invaders. The economic growth generated by that move has been nothing short of incredible.

As part of Mr. Putin's anti-West campaign is the idea that Western countries want to invade Siberia and cut Russia off from the East.



This map is a cartoon but it does reinforce the idea that others want to take territory away from Russia. In this illustration you see China (green), India (yellow), Armenia (gray), the USA (blue), Japan (purple) and even Canada (light blue).

There is are elements of truth in each portrayal as Russia and Japan do have border disputes in the Far East, Canada and Russia have border disputes in the Arctic, China formerly possessed wide swaths of Siberia, and the USA with forces from England and Canada controlled much of northern Siberia during the Russian revolution until Leon Trotsky's Red Army drove them out. In that area of Russia there are small cemeteries dotting the landscape where American, British and Canadian soldiers are buried.

- Chechnya, Tatarstan and several other Muslim republics might like to break free. Tatarstan has a history almost as old as Russia itself and enjoys a healthy oil producing economy. Losing the Republic of Tatarstan with her over 1,000 year old capital, Kazan, would be a blow to the Russian economy.

That being said does not however mean that Russia needs absolute authoritarian rule to survive and prosper. Whether or not the capital is moved, it is imperative that Russia invest in the middle and Eastern portions of the country else she will lose them by neglect.

Mr. Putin has continued the work that then-president Medvedev began on infrastructure projects and the development of resources in Siberia however he has placed severe restrictions on who can participate. The public stance is that investment participation is limited for purposes of maintaining sovereignty, but the reality is that only those companies that are a part of the Kremlin inner circle are welcome to participate.

Along with free and independent courts, open and free investment would go a long way to stabilizing Russia's position in the centre and east. Absolute rule and the concept of a national "strong man" always leads to stagnation eventually. It never grows an economy, especially the kind needed to lift such a large geographical country to the next level where the main source of wealth is generated by selling off its natural resources and thus a few become wealthy while the rest can only watch in hopelessness.

A strong and vibrant middle class would help Russia in repopulating as well as developing and protecting her southern border areas. Unfortunately the idea of a healthy and growing middle class just isn't compatible with authoritarian rule.

As we outlined in today's Mendeleyev Journal:  Working within Russia's legitimate framework of the rule of law and free elections, we're hopeful that President Putin will guide the country in ways that free her people, offer them opportunity and hope, and encourage international investment to create a Russia that is independent, strong, and prosperous. The world needs a strong and free Russia to play an important role in balancing the sometimes misguided interests of the West.

[Anotherkiwi]

As we outlined in today's Mendeleyev Journal:  Working within Russia's legitimate framework of the rule of law and free elections, we're hopeful that President Putin will guide the country in ways that free her people, offer them opportunity and hope, and encourage international investment to create a Russia that is independent, strong, and prosperous. The world needs a strong and free Russia to play an important role in balancing the sometimes misguided interests of the West.

...and pigs might fly!     Sorry, mendy but, although you're right, this sort of utopian dream will remain out of reach while Russia has its current leader.  Nobody from outside the country (except maybe Lukashenko) will be the slightest bit interested in investing in Russia while there is so much uncertainty over its future.

[Misha]

Well a weak leader would certainly lead to the demise of Russia as we know her.  A Jimmy Carter or Barrack Obama type of weakling would be a disaster for Russia just as Mikhail Gorbachev was for the Soviet Union.

To Gorbachev's credit, he was up against two masters--Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, and few Communist leaders would have survived given the bankrupt condition of the CCCP at the time

I would say that you overestimate Putin. Brezhnev's stagnation, as opposed to ecomic decline, was propped up by the oil fields of Siberia and the OPEC embargo that led to high oil prices and money flowing into the USSR. The Afghanistan war was waged when oil prices peaked. Both Gorbachev and Yeltsin faced oil and commodity prices that were at all time lows. Putin was lucky that oil and commodity prices skyrocketed. Remember the protests that were beginning with seniors over monetization? It was "solved" with high oil prices that allowed Putin to push up pensions and buy the goodwill of the populace. The question is what would or will happen if oil prices collapse to comparable lows as faced by Gorby and Yeltsin?

[Muzh]

The question is what would or will happen if oil prices collapse to comparable lows as faced by Gorby and Yeltsin?

Much of the same is my guess.
 
Now I think you are overestimating Putin. 
 
What he is doing is simply following the historical path of the Russian people. They need a strongman and will follow him to the gates of hell.
 
Any strongman.
 
That rules Medeved out.

[Misha]

Much of the same is my guess.
 
Now I think you are overestimating Putin. 
 
What he is doing is simply following the historical path of the Russian people. They need a strongman and will follow him to the gates of hell.
 
Any strongman.
 
That rules Medeved out.

Putin talks the talk, but does he walk the walk? He gives orders, but do his subordinates really follow through? I would wager that it is rarely the case. He is not held accountable and the state controlled media won't return to see if his orders were truly implemented. He puts on the bravado, but it is largely bluster IMVHO.

[mendeleyev]

What he is doing is simply following the historical path of the Russian people. They need a strongman and will follow him to the gates of hell.
 
Any strongman.
 
That rules Medeved out.

Medvedev's chances were finished when he announced at the United Russia convention that Mr. Putin was returning to the top spot. Those in the opposition who felt that they could work with him realized that at the end of the day he is loyal to Putin.

As an aside, one of the most memorable moments during that campaign period was his visit to Moscow State University. During the question and answer session following his remarks a young man stood and asked Mr. Medvedev how he was going to feel when the next generation of Russians would hunt he and Mr. Putin down and they'd suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein.

A brilliant lawyer and equally adept professor around youth, Mr. Medvedev thanked the young man for the courage to speak openly and gave the young students advice on how they could participate in the opposition and effect change.

I don't see that Russia will always need or desire a strong man and even during the Soviet period there were some weak leaders. Nikita Khrushchev was set aside for his weaknesses in a committee coup by Brezhnev, who was more bland than strong but shrewd enough to hang on for a long and stagnant time. Surprisingly in his engagement with the West and his advances in housing and standard of living, Khrushchev accomplished more in his supposed weakness than any other leader except for Stalin.

[mendeleyev]

Putin talks the talk, but does he walk the walk? He gives orders, but do his subordinates really follow through? I would wager that it is rarely the case.

That is illustrated in a prior post when I mentioned the continual tension between Putin and Medvedev on budget issues. The PM and his staff run the country day to day, something Putin truly misses. Putin made promises in the election that simply cannot the fulfilled, especially at the rate he'd like. So the Cabinet ignores him and does their best but you can't squeeze blood from a turnip as the expression goes.

This is a country that still hasn't made good on its promise of free housing to veterans of WWII. That war ended in 1945 and still today there are little celebrations in the media when another veteran finally moves into a place of their own. These vets are elderly and some are still waiting to move out of a shared apartment and into their own flat. In that number are some who are no longer able to live on their own.

Where VP shows his muscle in with the police forces. That keeps him in power because his greatest concentration of allies come from the security and military during the Soviet period.

[Anotherkiwi]

...you can't squeeze blood from a turnip as the expression goes.

Huh?  Don't they have stones in Russia? 

[mendeleyev]

They do. Kidney stones, sandy stones, quartz stones, and all manner. Kiwi, did you know that turnips, parsnips and radishes are somehow related? I read it on the Internet so it must be true. 

[Anotherkiwi]

They do. Kidney stones, sandy stones, quartz stones, and all manner. Kiwi, did you know that turnips, parsnips and radishes are somehow related? I read it on the Internet so it must be true. 

Well, I didn't know it, and GQ Blues and Sandro haven't commented on it, so it can't be true. 
 
What I do know, for an absolute fact, is that there's a town in Russia named after you - I've been there! 
 
(For those who don't know, Mendeleyevsk is on the north bank of the River Kama in Tatarstan, about 25 km from Naberezhnye Chelny).

[lordtiberius]

So to be clear, if the Russian people would replace Putin, would Russia maintain its territorial integrity? 

[SANDRO43]

Kiwi, did you know that turnips, parsnips and radishes are somehow related?

They're all root tubers .

[mendeleyev]

So to be clear, if the Russian people would replace Putin, would Russia maintain its territorial integrity?

Holey moley, LT. That is quite a complicated question. 

Throughout history Tsars have stayed in power by expanding the Russian Empire. Almost every great ruler was known for enlarging the borders.

Putin has shown that he will wage war and that innocents will die if republics try to leave. Just as Chechnya.

Tsar Nikolas II was King of Poland and Grand Duke of Finland when toppled in the Bolshevik revolution. Ukraine declared independence as well. It took a civil war to maintain the borders and to bring Ukraine back into the fold. Poland and Finland regained their freedom however.

At the end of WWII the Soviet influence grew in the near abroad and Kaliningrad was added. At the collapse of the Soviet system the country lost several Republics but even still remained the largest geographical country on earth.

It is impossible to accurately answer your question but when Putin steps down someday it will depend on the reasons for his departure, the resolve of the new leader, and who wants to leave. I'd bet money that Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan might try but given Dagestan's position on the Caspian Sea likely it would be held by force if necessary.

All three of those areas are rich in natural resources but even today there is danger associated with trying to extract those and so they are not as attractive to foreign investment today. Each is also a powder keg waiting to explode with violence so allowing them to be independent might be one of the worst things Russia could do. Holding them by force being the second worst thing Russia could do.

Tatarstan has no great desire to leave as long as they are allowed a semblance of self-rule. Tatarstan is populated mainly by moderate Muslims with a sizable ethnic Russian minority and has been very stable, but the radical Islam of Chechnya is making some inroads and that does concern Moscow.

The question might also be answered by who is in control in China and India. India has not been an aggressor historically but she does need living space for her Billion + population. China is more of a worry as China has historically had claims on Siberia and the far East and like India, the population of Billions of people in China brings pressure on that government for the type of farmland and natural resources found in Eastern Russia.

Holding onto the centre of the country will depend long term on development of infrastructure for raising the standard of living today and for a more adequate defense of the country tomorrow. In my opinion Mr. Putin has jeopardized that with restrictions on who can participate in the development plans for the near East.

[mendeleyev]

Excellent column in the Moscow Times:


All autocracies have two things in common: They exaggerate the threats they face from leading opposition figures and take extreme, repressive measures to limit or remove those threats.

Russia is certainly no exception, and the trial and conviction of opposition leader Alexei Navalny is a case in point. Just like the Pussy Riot — or perhaps even Mikhail Khodorkovsky — convictions, the Kremlin would have been much smarter just leaving Navalny alone. By drawing public attention to the farcical Navalny trial, however, the Kremlin only humiliates itself and boosts Navalny's popularity.

Until the Kremlin unleashed its campaign against Navalny, he was not well known in Russia. In April 2011, only 6 percent of the population even recognized his name, according to a Levada Center poll taken that month. When Levada took the same poll in March this year, this number had increased to 37 percent nationwide. After his conviction on July 18, this figure jumped to 80 percent among Muscovites, according to a VTsIOM poll on July 23.

The increase in recognition was largely ­because Navalny's name was mentioned more often on state-controlled television — although exclusively in a negative context. Pseudo-documentaries on television — such as NTV's "Anatomy of a Protest" — told viewers that Navalny was recruited by the CIA when he participated in Yale University's six-month World Fellows program in 2010. During his U.S. stay, we were told, Navalny received his secret mission: to lead U.S.-­orchestrated protests in Russia, to be instigated in 2011 after the State Duma elections, and undermine the regime of President Vladimir Putin.

But the propaganda overkill backfired on the Kremlin. As was the case during the Soviet period, the more crude and absurd the propaganda is, the fewer people believe it — even among Putin's core electorate of conservative, ­working-class Russians. Perhaps the Kremlin should listen more closely to Ketchum and the other image consultants it has hired: Try a more subtle, more refined PR approach. Use a scalpel, not the customary Russian ax.

This smear campaign against Navalny intensified in late April, when his trial on embezzlement charges began in Kirov. The prosecution tried to turn the country's most prominent anti-­corruption fighter into a corruptionist himself. During his annual call-in show a week after the Navalny trial opened, Putin, in a clear reference to Navalny, said: "People who battle against corruption should by crystal clean. Otherwise, [their battle] takes the form of PR and political self-promotion." Those who expose corruption, Putin added, shouldn't be corrupt themselves.

This was followed by a televised statement by Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin,, who suggested that Navalny was to blame for the criminal charges because he shouldn't have "teased" the authorities with his anti-corruption activities.

Thus, the Kremlin cooked up the KirovLes case to eliminate Navalny as a political rival and gadfly. It was also an attempt to discredit his largest corruption exposes aimed at Putin's closest allies, including leaders of United Russia, Gazprom, Transneft, VTB, Russian Railways and the Investigative Committee.

In exposing these and other schemes, Navalny was doing the job that the Investigative Committee, Audit Chamber and Prosecutor General's Office clearly should have done. But these cases were ignored because of the targets' loyalty to the Kremlin.

Notably, the government's case against Navalny was dropped twice for lack of evidence, but it was suddenly revived in July 2012 on the direct orders of Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin — conspicuously, three days after Navalny exposed that Bastrykin owned undeclared real estate in the Czech Republic.

The ridiculous legal case against Navalny made even Khodorkovsky's second trial look rock-solid. Most important, the prosecutor, Sergei Bogdanov, did not establish that Navalny committed a crime.

Bogdanov tried to show that Navalny forced Vyacheslav Opalev, the director of state-controlled KirovLes, to sell timber to a middleman at below-market prices, resulting in a $500,000 loss to the Kirov regional budget. But Bogdanov produced no evidence that Navalny had threatened or coerced Opalev to sign the contract, nor did he present any evidence that Navalny even profited from the deal.

Most observers were left scratching their heads. How could the judge find Navalny guilty of embezzling $500,000 from KirovLes if there was no trace whatsoever of him receiving even a ruble from the deal? This fact alone would be enough to dismiss the case for lack of evidence. Instead, the judge handed Navalny a five-year sentence.

In reality, Navalny had a completely different role in KirovLes. He was hired by Kirov Governor Nikita Belikh in 2009 to help root out rampant corruption in the region — and he started with KirovLes and its director, Opalev, who, thanks in part to Navalny's findings, pleaded guilty to embezzlement charges in December. In a particularly cynical twist and a blatant conflict of interest, Opalev received only a suspended sentence in return for his agreement to testify against Navalny.

There were several other factors that made the Navalny case a farce. First, the judge did not allow the defense to cross-examine Opalev, nor did he allow 13 of the defense's witnesses to testify on Navalny's behalf. Second, the prosecutor relied on only three dubious witnesses: Opalev, who often contradicted himself, Opalev's daughter and a KirovLes accountant. Third, the judge's verdict, which took three hours to read, matched the prosecutor's conclusion word for word.

Finally, the agreement between the seller, KirovLes, and the buyer, a timber-trading company run by Pyotr Ofitserov, was a standard purchase agreement. Since the prosecutor did not prove there was any fraud or blackmail on Navalny's or Ofitserov's part, the judge essentially ruled that the profit earned by Ofitserov by reselling the timber at a higher price was "illegal." This incredibly twisted legal logic takes Russia back to the Soviet period, when earning a profit by reselling goods at a markup — a staple of any free-market economy — was categorized as "speculation," which  carried a two-year prison sentence.

Meanwhile, a rival faction with the elite, thought to be led by presidential administration head Vyacheslav Volodin and acting Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, reportedly pressured the prosecutor and judge to release Navalny pending his appeal. They also helped Navalny register for the Moscow race, securing signatures from 110 municipal deputies from United Russia — the same party Navalny famously vilified as "crooks and thieves." The idea behind this plan was to add some legitimacy to the mayoral election by having a real opponent for once — not the usual Kremlin-friendly ones — run in a major race.

Volodin and Sobyanin clearly wanted to give Navalny the role of the straw man who would get no more than 5 percent of the vote, but they will likely get much more than they bargained for. According to a July Synovate Comcon poll, the number of Muscovites who intend to vote for Navalny has already increased to 14.4 percent. In the next six weeks before the election, Navalny could easily boost this number to 20 percent, particularly if he attracts a significant percentage of the votes that opposition candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, who withdrew from the race in June, would have gotten. Prokhorov, who collected 20 percent of the Moscow vote in the 2012 presidential election, has a similar electoral base as Navalny: young, educated, Internet-savvy and liberal voters.

Regardless of the Sept. 8 mayoral results, Navalny's five-year sentence will surely be affirmed by the appeal's court. As with Khodorkovsky, the authorities also have several other sham criminal cases against Navalny in reserve — two fraud cases involving the defunct Union of Right Forces party and the postal service — and plenty of servile prosecutors and judges to keep him in prison past 2018, if necessary.

In the end, perhaps Navalny's greatest "crime" was when, during an April 4 interview on Dozhd TV, he said, "If I become president, Putin will sit in jail." Apparently, Putin has decided that as long as he is president, Navalny will sit in jail.

Michael Bohm is opinion page editor of The Moscow Times.
 

Read more: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/putin-uses-his-favorite-ax-to-grind-navalny/483659.html#ixzz2aDmmLPJI
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