Putin’s popular political opponent is convicted, eliminating him from the election. It looks like trumped-up charges to me, considering that
Of course this most recent trial was different from the previous one, and when the verdict was read the judge’s new pronouncement reflected this.
Kidding.
Surely a Trumped-up charge?
Obvious pun that everyone would get without the capitalization, I think. Bearing that in mind, do you think Trump has second thoughts about his BFF now…or is he thinking that Putin gave him an idea on how to handle the next election?
The latter.
Better that Putin give him an idea, than that Putin give him a supply of polonium (and an umbrella).
Definitely the latter.
He’s lucky it was just figurative.
I agree. This is Russia. It represents progress if they’re only figuratively killing people.
That NYT piece is extremely misleading. No, Alexei Navalny isn’t “a viable candidate to challenge Putin”, and winning 27% of the vote in Moscow doesn’t change that. Moscow is not all that much more representative of Russia than, say, London is of England.
Most Russian voters probably don’t even particularly know who Navalny is: his approval is currently 6%, compared to 80% or so for Putin and 28% for the Communist leader, Zyuganov. I don’t think the Communists have a great shot at defeating Putin, but they probably have a better shot than anyone else (unless Putin’s ruling party / circle splits, which is always a possibility). I guess Zhirinovsky and the ethnonationalists might be a future possibility to challenge Putin as well, they’re quite popular among young people so they have a built in advantage.
The NYT implying that a candidate with 6% public support is a “viable” candidate for president seems like a good example of why American’s confidence in the mass media is so low these days.
http://www.apnorc.org/projects/Pages/HTML%20Reports/public-opinion-in-russia-russians-attitudes-on-the-economic-and-domestic-issues-issue-brief.aspx
The outcome came as no surprise whatsoever to anyone, least of all Navalny himself. Utterly predictable (though no less depressing for its predictability).
Could Navalny have mounted a campaign that actually challenged Putin in the next election? Highly unlikely, given the system as it currently exists. However, it is revealing that Putin et al. continue to be terrified of even the slightest hint of genuine opposition.
I wouldn’t really say that. There are opposition parties in the Russian legislature, and between all of them they got 46% of the legislative vote last year. They do get cracked down on, but it’s not as though they don’t exist or people aren’t able to vote for them.
I don’t know Putin’s mind, obviously, but if I were to guess I’d suspect he doesn’t crack down on his critics because he’s afraid on them, quite the contrary. I’d guess he does so because there’s a significant constituency in Russia for authoritarian government, and cracking down on dissidents (especially liberal dissidents but not limited to them) helps endear him to the people who like that sort of thing, and who make up a big chunk of his base.
I would say that the parties that currently hold seats in the Russian parliament do not represent any genuine opposition at all. They keep Zhirinovsky around to play the role of court jester. The Communist Party presented a significant political challenge to Yeltsin back in the 1990s and seems to be useful to Putin as a way to pacify some older members of the electorate. But absolutely no party other than Edinaia Rossiia has any political power whatsoever. If the party leaders spoke out forcefully against any significant governmental policies, the parties would almost certainly be eliminated entirely.
The popular demonstrations that arose after the elections in late 2011 brought a glimmer of hope that Putin’s stranglehold on the country would at least be loosened. Alas, the reactions that followed revealed the fear of real opposition that persists in Putin’s government to this day.
Mightn’t there also be an element of relatively random promotion of criminal charges against visible critics just to muddy the waters, particularly if their criticism focuses on financial corruption in high places (i.e., weaken their USP with the message “They’re all crooks”)?
Not that Navalny is necessarily a liberal democrat himself, either, or that he would not adopt Putinesque attitudes to the West:
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/is-aleksei-navalny-a-liberal-or-a-nationalist/278186/
I’m sure that Trump could do business with him.
Aleksei Navalny is dead.
A tough way to attain hero status, but a hero he was. A hero is how he will be remembered.
Meanwhile, US congressional Republicans think Putin is an admirable leader.