On april 21st this year a big campaign named Is it really Putin? will take place in the biggest Russian cities. We dont trust Putin anymore, because his clan got richer than the richest man in the world, but the population of the country is rapidly decreasing as like as it was while the World War. 95 per cent of industrial enterprises and banks are in foreigners hands. Our country is almost sold without fight. NATO has the right to be a host on our land! Now they want to allow landing of super heavyweight cargo airplanes from Afganistan. We are assured that its going to be just a logistical base, but we think its a lie we are sure its going to be NATO base and we are not able to control what they will transport on those planes. Putin gave our Amur islands to China and now Chinese army in no time can trespass Russian border. Razor wire is taken away and our border guards are moved to centre of the country. Our raw products are being transferred abroad, the country is being pulled in World Trade Organization( WTO) which means our products will cost as much as imoprterd ones for us. We will be eating GMO products as its one of the WTO terms. We dont trust Putin, because he won the elections by breaking the law (he made up a filter for those who wanted to take part in elections and be a president). Only for that he had to be removed from the elections. We dont trust Putin because we are not even sure that the person who has been on TV, has taken all decisions, has appeared at conferences for the last 12 years is real Putin. His appearance differs from one he had years ago. It makes us think they fob us off Putin doubles. It means our country is ruled by strangers. We call for specialists (criminalists, photographers, cosmetic surgeons, workers of airports, etc) to help find and analyze materials and prove that Putin is not real. For more information about us at volya-naroda.ru Telephone number - +79278125256 E-mail contact@raznesi.info Come to the rally on April 21st! Lets make impeachment out of this inauguration! Join the conversation in twitter http://twitter.com/#!/volya_eng
Why would russia be any different than the west in these political battles? Throw your mind back to when bush/blair were in power. There were similar demostrations in the uk and america. Both by brits and americans in their scorn at the terrible leadership they faced and witnessed. And yet in the so called 'free nations' The goverment ignored its own people, to blindly carry on. But yet you expect russia to act any differently? What do you think is going to happen. That Vlad Putin will step down and put himself on trial. Many are still waiting for junior and Tony to do that.
Putin is good for the Western countries because he destroys Russia better as nukes. After ten new years of Putin Russia will looks like a bunch of extremely poor African Banana states.Unfortunately Communist Obama do not support democratic opposition in Russia. The Russian people with a little bit brain can only move away from Russia, the Regime of Putin will kill millions of innocent Russians just for surviving and for keeping of power.Look Syria.Interesting that families of Kremlin rulers live already in different Western countries with stolen by Russian people $ billions.
Putin's predecessor, Yeltsin, was a useless drunk who cozied up to the West and created the conditions by which the gangster capitalism you described emerged. Thus, the Russian people hated him and he was unpopular in the polls. Putin is relatively popular and his approval ratings high because the Russian's understand that he is attempting to deal with the kind of cronyism of his predecessor. Putin is hated abroad because he is good for the Russian's and stands up to the West.
I honestly don't know what Ostap is going on about, but then again, I can barely understand him most of the time anyway. Putin is indeed popular, and he knows how to play the game, but there is definitely growing resentment among his people. He won 63% of the vote in the most recent election, but it probably helped that he was up against about 4 candidates who mostly split each other's voting base. Had Putin faced a single formidable opponent, he may not have fared as well.
I agree. His popularity is waning but even so most politicians in the west would die for his popularity rating. I think politician's generally are disliked which is a reflection of the economic crisis facing the planet. I take your point about the split in the opposition vote but that is something that's not exclusively attributable to Russian politics. I think Putin probably has a strong authoritarian streak but then again most politician's in his position would given the fact that NATO continues to spread eastwards and Russia feels increasingly hemmed in. I know that this is a controversial point, but I personally am of the opinion that it was a tragedy for the world that the former Soviet Union broke up into its constituent parts because despite it's obvious faults, domestically, it at least provided a counterbalance to US power, globally.
We're headed for a multilateral world in terms of military power. China, Russia, and maybe even India and Brazil will be counters to the US in the long run. I guess the EU as a whole could develop a continental military as well. It is true that the Cold War provided a better balance than what we've currently got in place, but our debt issues will most likely "fix" that soon enough anyway.
What do you expect? Its clear that Putin won't walk away from the leadership role he has in Russia. Its likely that him and Medvev are going to both rule Russia for many more years to come. Every big election year is tainted with evidence of voter fraud and in some cases, opponents are strong armed into not running against Putin. Communism may have died in Russia, but their style of corrupt governance is definitely still running strong.
He was a clear winner and the alleged fraud would have been insignificant to the result anyhow. Anyway, as an American it's maybe better you don't talk about electoral failings.
Russia’s economy will expand 4 percent this year, faster than earlier estimated, as the world’s biggest energy exporter benefits from higher prices for commodities, the International Monetary Fund said. The forecast for 2013 was revised down to 3.9 percent because oil prices will probably retreat, the Washington-based lender said today in its World Economic Outlook. The 2012 prediction was upgraded from a 3.3 percent projection in January and was almost in line with the IMF’s projection of 4.1 percent for this year made in September. http://www.businessweek.com/news/20...-forecast-to-4-percent-on-higher-crude-prices Hardly looks destroyed when it is growing more than that of the UK,France and the USA.
Russia has a long way to go before its economy grows to the size of the US or that of Europe. It might be seeing more growth now than most other places, but that doesn't mean the situation over there is actually good. They still haven't really recovered very well since the Soviet Union collapsed. Still very high levels of poverty and the gap of wealth between the upper classes and lower classes continues to get larger. Not to mention the living conditions in Russia are pretty close to 3rd world levels. They can have their 4 percent growth increase. living in the US is still light years better.
Russia is like most countries today a plurocracy (one powerful elite ruling the system), 'democracy' is the magic word to snatch the power from the people, the people have nothing to say, never could change or influence anything. People have become like robots, they watch television and are going to vote in mass, don't see any danger, any problem, they trust 'their' leader. They can't see what is really going on because the media is filtered. Yes they are organizing the millitary globally (they are doing this since 9/11, global military build up and expansion going on, and ofcourse their imperialistic joined strike fighter) They are building their one world system, their global empire all together. They have organized against the world since 1948, when they started their united nations (which means global empire) Those planes from Aghanistan could carry drugs and lithium, because they need more capital (power) to gain control over the system (they use this wealth to pay large amounts to people they need on their side (police, military, judges and such), this is the corruption.
The response was to the assertion claiming Russia's economy is 'completely destroyed'....The assertion was false. It's not destroyed. Nobody is claiming it's good just that it isn't destroyed so your point is a strawman. Poverty and inequality is not exclusively a problem for Russia. Have you lived in Russia?
I never said Russia's economy was destroyed nor was I was saying that it is the only country that is experiencing problems such as poverty. Man on Fire was implying that the economic situation in Russia was better than it is in the West, which it is not. Russia is just as susceptible to economic collapse as the rest of the world is. We are in a worldwide recession you know.
Oh our election process is not perfect. But it does not compare to what happens in Russia. Putin's opponents being jailed, people being strong armed into voting for Putin. Independent foreign observers cite these criminal acts every election year in Russia. A lot of what your article pointed out can probably be attributed to bureaucratic miss-communication across counties that count and moderate their election processes differently. Your article also pointed out useless charges such as misrepresentation of exit polls and newspaper articles contradicting each other of voter fraud or conspiracy theories. The issue of thousands of votes not being counted in Ohio is likely an issue for every state. Also the accusation that party officials choose which votes count and which ones do not is not so simple. All votes in question are extensively reviewed by officials representing both parties. The reason why 90,000 votes weren't counted is because they were likely filled out wrong by voters. Thus making it too difficult to determine who the vote is for.
