Ninety minutes of raw video feed of Sobchak at CSIS. It was a 15-minute talk by Sobchak followed by a Q&A session. (You can get our rundown by Mike Eckel in Washington here.)
Campaign Trail
Putin is on a trip today to Krasnoyarsk, touring facilities ahead of the Universiade in 2019 and meeting with the governor and the region's "main economic players" in part to discuss environmental issues, according to spokesman Dmitry Peskov. Those big "players" could include Vladimir Potanin and Vladimir Rashevsky, as well as Oleg Deripaska or a representative.
Putin's then heading to Novosibirsk.
Navalny has explained why he was summoned to the Investigative Committee.
During questioning, he says, he was shown a medical report in which a police officer claimed Navalny kicked him in the right knee.
- By Carl Schreck
Asset Declarations
Putin has declared his income and assets to the Central Election Commission, a requirement for presidential candidates.
Here's a link to his and others' declarations so far.
And here's a breakdown of Putin's declaration via RBK.
Putin's total declared income for 2011-16 was 38.5 million rubles ($674,000) from his presidential salary, bank deposits, and a military pension. Ahead of the 2012 election, he declared an income of 17.7 million rubles ($309,887) over the previous four years.
Putin added in the declaration that he owns one 77-square-meter apartment and a garage in St. Petersburg, as well as two Soviet-made cars from the 1960s, a Russian-made Lada off-road vehicle from 2009, and a small camper.
The Kremlin has long denied claims that Putin has a vast hidden fortune. Individuals seen as being part of his inner circle, however, have become enormously wealthy during his 18 years in power as either president or prime minster.
A Nizhny Tagil furniture store has started a marketing campaign in which some of its furniture is named after candidates: "Ksenia" pillow, "Volfich" (nickname for Zhirinovsky) sofa, "Gennady" wardrobe. And people got all indignant about it.
Here's the report from Current Time TV:
It's clear from the accompanying text story that the candidates and their parties are not amused.
Never mind...
...the March 18 presidential election.
According to a commentary titled Apolitcal Therapy in Novaya Gazeta by Yuliya Galyamina of the Moscow-based School of Local Self-Administration, it is local referendums that will be the engine of change in Russia -- fueled by less highly politicized, grassroots issues.
How Much Did Candidates Pay Per Signature?
This is from February 3, but it's still interesting.
Political analyst Maksim Kats has looked at the declared spending of each campaign so far to see how much each candidate spent gathering their signatures. He compares that with how much he had to pay per signature when he ran for the State Duma in 2014. Putin got his for just 14 rubles per signature. Sobchak paid 42 rubles. Yavlinsky paid 196 rubles.
Kats argues that the numbers show that Putin used "administrative resources" to get his signatures. The numbers for Sobchak indicate that she tried to get her signatures legally at first, he says, but was having little success and so used administrative resources. She paid 581,000 rubles to people collecting signatures and 10 million rubles for "consultants." Yavlinsky paid 22 million to his signature collectors (didn't need any consultants!).
Navalny 'Demonstration Against Idiocy' Challenges 'Extremist' Ruling
Aleksei Navalny has urged supporters to post photos taken during the 1945 victory parade at the end of World War II (the Great Patriotic War to Russians) following the fining of one of the barred opposition leader's volunteers.
The call by Navalny, who's barred from running in March, appears to be a response to the prosecution and fining in January of the volunteer for a so-called administrative offense.
The image in question shows German soldiers holding banners that bear Nazi symbols, and Navalny and others claim it appears on the cover of a high-school textbook.
"This is not just a well-known photograph but a symbol, in a sense the main picture of the Great Patriotic War," Navalny says. "The importance of this image is reflected in the fact that it is placed on the cover of the history textbook for the 11th grade."
He vows to post the image himself to social media and urges others to do the same in a "campaign against idiocy" that challenges Russian authorities' characterization of "extremists."
Here's the story from our Current Time TV colleagues (click image to see):
Writer Leonid Ragozin says the book bearing the image is "circulated in thousands of schools."
Dubious 'Observer' Missions
Ukrainian academic and blogger Anton Shekhovstov predicted how various observer missions are likely to descend on Russia and annexed Crimea to "monitor" the upcoming presidential vote. He describes how these monitors work and who they are likely to be, as well as some of the history of "pro-Kremlin efforts through fake electoral observation."
The post is called European Council on Democracy and Human Rights: “Presidential election in Crimea is fair, free and legitimate.
Here's an excerpt:
The name “European Council on Democracy and Human Rights” sounds nice, doesn’t it? “European”, “democracy”, “human rights” – we surely like all these concepts. And the readers will ask themselves: how comes that an organisation with such a nice name has legitimised the vote in Russia-annexed Crimea? They will do a Google search and find the website of the European Council on Democracy and Human Rights (ECDHR), decorated with EU flags, that claims that the ECDHR is “a nonprofit, nongovernmental organization that is supporting democratic institutions and practices around the world” and is engaged in “promotion of the values of European Charter of Fundamental Rights, and the European Convention of Human Rights”. This is, again, very nice, but the readers will then have even more questions. And those will be valid questions, but there is no need to wait until March 2018 to ask them and then seek answers – I will answer them today.
Shekhovstov is author of Routledge Press's recent book Russia And The Western Far Right: Tango Noir.