From the MT:
“As Anger at
Ruling Regime Boils Over, Putin Strikes Hard Against Dissent”
Many now
consider “Putin’s Palace” — that jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny
exposed in a YouTube video that has garnered more than 80 million views in a
matter of days — as a symbol of the ruling regime, and the black-garbed riot
police attacking protesters as the method by which the president plans to deal
with dissent. The unauthorized demonstrations that were held in cities across
Russia on Saturday saw not only the largest protest crowds in years, but also
the harshest and cruelest response by the authorities.
The brutality
of the riot police was not so much a response to any perceived threat from the
peaceful protesters as it was an expression of the frantic fear of the Kremlin
at Navalny’s decision to return to Russia and the release of his damning video
exposé. And, unlike previous demonstrations, the police responded brutally not
only in Moscow and St. Petersburg, but also in Novosibirsk, Voronezh,
Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Kazan, Khabarovsk and, among others, Yakutsk, where
protesters braved freezing temperatures of -50 degrees Celsius. The
authorities’ tactic of “beheading” the movement by detaining the local leaders
of Navalny’s political headquarters in Moscow and other regions failed to stop
the protests from materializing. As a result, leaders chose to detain nearly
3,000 protesters and write up official complaints against countless more —
hoping to blackmail them into silence with the threat of prison time for a
repeated offense. Whether Putin ordered these harsh measures remains unclear.
The siloviki whose excessive and chaotic behavior in arresting Navalny upon his
return and who tackled and battered protesters might simply have been following
the maxim of “better safe than sorry” in carrying out the National Leader’s
wishes.
Navalny, of
course, is the key figure in all this. He remains the only opposition
politician in Russia capable of mobilizing 100,000 protesters nationwide on
short notice. But these protests did not arise out of nowhere: they were the
venting of feelings that had been building all last year and for which the
unsuccessful poisoning attempt on Navalny’s life, his illegal arrest upon his
return and, of course, the video exposé served as the catalyst. Thus, Navalny
became the object around which widespread dissatisfaction with the president
and ruling elite could crystallize. Like a stone thrown into a stagnant swamp,
Navalny’s return not only reactivated Russia’s political life, but also
revealed a great deal about the country’s politics and condition as a whole.
Two things are particularly noteworthy. The first is just how false the
so-called “opposition” parties in the State Duma actually are. Not only did
they fail to initiate an investigation into Navalny’s poisoning or respond to
the subsequent and extremely serious accusations he leveled against President
Putin, but its deputies hurled invective at Navalny from the Duma rostrum. It
is more than a little depressing that of the 450 “people’s deputies” elected to
that body, not even a handful of independent votes were heard, unlike the
previous convocation. That, however, can be remedied.
The second is
Russia’s lack of true law enforcement agencies. In their place, the country has
only repressive bodies such as National Guard troops and policemen who seize
innocent civilians, judges who hand down sentences dictated from above and
investigators and prosecutors who incriminate citizens for exercising their
constitutional rights. At the same time, they see no wrong in assassination
attempts against opposition politicians or in a leader building a palace
financed by kickbacks and using the Federal Guard Service to protect it. Both
Navalny’s film and the harsh crackdown on protests across the country provoked
a powerful international response.
The Kremlin
itself fueled this reaction, first with the poisoning incident and then with
Navalny’s arrest. The mass protests against Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko
— to whom Putin is increasingly being compared — also played a role. And,
however vociferously Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Presidential Spokesman
Dmitry Peskov try to deny it, international opinion is already a major factor
and one that is certain to grow. What’s more, the protests themselves will
continue, even weekly, according to Navalny’s organization. All this puts the
Kremlin in an even more difficult position than Lukashenko because Russia’s
elections are still ahead, and very soon. These developments seem to have come
at a bad time for the political transformation that Putin launched one year ago
— namely, enabling himself to remain in office indefinitely and without any
significant accountability before the Russian people.
^ This shows
the true state of things within Russia from Putin, to the Police to the Protesters
to the Ordinary Russian. ^
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