Sign Of The Times? Putin Billboards 'Under Guard' By Off-Duty Police
A police sergeant in western Siberia says he and fellow officers have been ordered to use their own vehicles to guard President Vladimir Putin's billboards in an unprecedented operation to ward off "the protest-oriented population."
Adding to photos and eyewitness evidence from around Russia of such round-the-clock police surveillance, the officer says none of the other seven candidates' billboards is getting such treatment ahead of the March 18 election, which is expected to award Putin a fourth term in the Kremlin.
Last week, two campaign banners featuring enormous portraits of Putin in the Siberian city of Tomsk were defaced by vandals with paintball guns. One of the Putin images was left with a smear of blood-red paint dripping down from between his eyes.
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- By Carl Schreck
Pro-Kremlin Pollster Claims Low Support For Boycott
The Kremlin-friendly Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) polling agency has released a poll claiming that only 4 percent of Russians plan to boycott the March 18 presidential election.
Opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who has been barred from running for president because of a felony embezzlement conviction that he says was politically motivated. Analysts believe the Kremlin is worried that low turnout would further taint an already heavily stage-managed election that is all but certain to award President Putin with a fourth term in the Kremlin.
According to the FOM findings, 61 percent of Russians said neither they nor any of their friends plan to boycott the election. Twenty-four percent said someone they know is planning to boycott. More than half, said they view the idea of a boycott "negatively" and only 5 percent said they see it "positively."
The FOM survey said 55 percent of respondents plan to vote, while another 14 percent said they most likely will vote, and 10 percent will probably vote.
The most respected independent polling agency in Russia, Levada Center, has said it will not do any election polling after it was forced to register as a "foreign agent" under a Russian law that critics say was intended to solidify the Kremlin's control over civil society.
Weird Polling
Sociologists in the Urals city of Chelyabinsk have been conducting a survey that has locals scratching their heads, the website Znak.com reported on February 12
A local research firm called Monitor has been asking residents questions like: "Are you aware that the West might influence the results of the [presidential] election if the voter turnout is low?" and "The active participation of Russians in the upcoming presidential election would be a blow to the authority of the United States. Do you agree?"
According to Monitor Director Aleksei Shirinkin, the project is a national survey. "By the reaction we got, we have seen that these questions really are topical and people are worried about this," he was quoted as saying.
Earlier, another part of the same project also raised eyebrows in Chelyabinsk. Locals reported receiving robocalls from a number in Moscow asking them if they would like to take a survey about the election. The questions then reportedly tried to create a connection between the turnout in the Russian ballot and the Western sanctions against Russia.
Apparently Monitor's findings are already available and have been helpfully summarized on a leaflet that some Chelyabinsk residents have reported receiving.
According to the leaflet, which is titled without subtlety "Honest Survey," 42.8 percent of Chelyabinsk residents "know that America is threatening to introduce new sanctions before the Russian presidential election," while 77.2 percent know that the West can influence the election if turnout is low and 74.6 percent agree that active participation in the election would be a blow to U.S. authority.
- By Carl Schreck
Kremlin Pushing Referendums -- But Not Everywhere
Turnout is all the talk in March 18 Russian presidential ballot: The Kremlin is seen as trying to boost turnout to show President Putin’s guaranteed reelection has broad legitimacy, while opposition leader Aleksei Navalny is seeking to depress turnout with calls for a boycott.
In numerous regions, authorities are arranging various referendums coinciding with the election in what’s seen as a bid to drive more people to the polls.
This is not so easy, however, in two Moscow districts where opposition candidates surprisingly captured almost all the local council seats last year.
The municipal deputies’ efforts to organize referendums in those districts have been shot down by local courts after prosecutors challenged the moves, Kommersant reported on February 12.
Kommersant cites respected political analyst Aleksandr Kynev as saying that authorities aren’t interested in referendums in “protest” districts of the Russian capital that could lead to “undesirable results in the presidential election.”
Opposition Snowdrifts
Moscow is still digging out after a major snowstorm earlier this month that dumped an estimated 72 million cubic meters of snow on the capital.
Although the authorities have been working around the clock to clean up the mess, some Muscovites think they need additional motivation. At least one decorated the drifts and ice-covered sidewalks in their neighborhood with the name of opposition politician and anticorruption activist Aleksei Navalny.
"We think they'll take the snow away any minute now," a local posted on Twitter.
Academic Talks About Anti-Putin Vest, Draws 'Nazi Germany' Comparison
Our Russian Service interviewed the chemist who was detained and fined 500 rubles (under $9) after he greeted a Putin visit to Novosibirsk with a brightly colored vest with the messages "Putin Is Russia's Misfortune" and "Putin - Bad President" on it.
"I can no longer be silent and listen to all these lies from the television," Igor Prosanov tells RFE/RL's Russian Service. "I wanted to declare my dissent, and not only my own. I am standing in the name of many people. Many people support me in my disagreement with the policies of our president."
He adds: "First of all, I think that under [Putin's] leadership, our country is cultivating aggression. Practically the same thing is happening here that happened in Nazi Germany. I am afraid that this will end very badly for the country. Of course, there are also other problems, such as the robbery of the people, wages below the poverty level."
It's an extensive interview with the 52-year-old professor at Novosibirsk University.
Prosanov also says he was also detained in late January when he turned up to support Aleksei Navalny's "voter strike."
"I have been at many protests. I was detained at Navalny's demonstration [in favor of an election boycott on January 28]. I have two administrative charges against me for that. The first one was already heard and I was fined 10,000 rubles. Now I am awaiting the second hearing."
- By Carl Schreck
Candidates React To Airline Tragedy
The candidates are responding to the crash of a Saratov Airlines passenger jet outside Moscow that killed all 71 passengers and crew on board on February 11.
President Putin postponed a trip to Sochi that was scheduled for February 12, and his spokesman said Putin “offers his profound condolences to those who lost their relatives in the crash."
Veteran liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky placed a candle at the airport in Saratov, where the crew on the Saratov Airlines flight started their trip, and expressed “loving memory to all who died” in the crash.
Communist Party candidate Pavel Grudinin also expressed condolences to the relatives and loved ones of the victims of the “terrible accident” in brief remarks at the beginning of a Feburary 12 press conference.
The self-described “against-all” candidate, Ksenia Sobchak, wrote on her Instagram account that “we all mourn together with the relatives and friends of those who died,” adding that the crash was a “terrible tragedy.
Nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovsky, meanwhile, reportedly called for the creation of a civilian aviation ministry, saying “only in this way can this crucial industry for Russia be cleaned up.”
Tagging Putin
Unknown vandals have been shooting paintball guns loaded with red paint at the billboards promoting President Vladimir Putin's candidacy in the Siberian city of Tomsk, local Tomsk TV2 reported.
The station posted photos of at least two billboards on which the image of Putin was spattered with blood-red paint.
Earlier on February 9, RFE/RL's Russian Service reported that police in Novokuznetsk and Syktyvkar had been ordered to guard Putin's billboards 24 hours a day. The Novokuznetsk order came after a vandal painted the word "Liar" on one of Putin's advertisements.
A YouTube blogger in Syktyvkar posted this video of police protecting Putin's billboards:
Authorities Irked By Navalny's Boycott Campaign
Navalny's campaign for a voters' strike is prompting not so much a reduction of anticipated turnout as a crackdown from police and the authorities, writes Nezavisimaya Gazeta.
It reports that Navalny supporters are feeling the heat in regions across the country: in Sochi they are being summoned for educational talks at schools; in Kemerovo they are being threatened with violence; and in Sverdlovsk they are being threatened with the loss of their jobs
Promising A Rose Garden
Officials in Crimea, the Ukrainian region annexed by Russia in 2014, are trying to convince Crimean Tatars to support President Putin in the March election, RFE/RL's Crimean Desk reports.
It is a tough sell, as Crimean Tatars overwhelmingly rejected the annexation of the region and their independent institutions have been completely dismantled over the last four years. Ukrainian and international rights activists, as well as Western governments, have complained of systematic persecution of Crimean Tatars in their native region.
Nonetheless, the deputy head of the Russia-imposed administration in Simferopol, Ismet Ablayev, said on February 8 that money for a number of infrastructure projects in Crimean Tatar parts of the city has been allocated and "they have been included in the city's construction plan for 2018."
Officials in recent days have also promised to build a road connecting two Crimean Tatar neighborhoods -- Ak-Mechet and Fontany -- and to open a 280-place kindergarten in the latter.
Refat Chubarov, the head of the independent Crimean Tatar Mejlis, told RFE/RL: "The occupation authorities perfectly well understand the mood among Crimean Tatars. An absolute majority of Crimean Tatars will not participate in this election. So in order to find a certain number of collaborators, they are trying to spin people's minds as much as possible, including by promising to resolve problems that haven't been resolved for years in places where Crimean Tatars live. These traps are perfectly obvious."
Ukraine has complained to the international community, urging them to pressure Russia not to hold its election on the annexed Ukrainian peninsula.