Page 20 - RusRPTMar21

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is now in third place with 9% and Defence Minister Sergei Zhoigu ties with Zhirinovsky in fourth place with 8%.
Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) leader Gennady Zhuganov’s trust rating remains stuck at 4% after it fell from 10% in 2017.
On the basis of the trust ratings the core group around Putin appears to remain solidly in charge and the most trusted by the people, however, as bne IntelliNews reported Navalny has shaken up the system and younger members of the systemic opposition are split over whether to support Navalny or not.
While Navalny’s movement is unlikely to oust United Russia or Putin in September’s Duma elections and the 2024 presidential elections respectively, many of the younger members of he KPRF in particular want to ditch their old guard leaders and modernise the party. The communist party has been the big winner from Navalny “smart voting” tactics where he encourages voters to vote for any candidate that is the most likely to oust the United Russia candidate and the KPRF has seen the number of its seats in the Duma double as a result.
Zyuganov remains devoutly married to the traditional Marxist-Leninist ideas and plays a useful role of splitting the vote as far as the Kremlin is concerned, but with a well developed grassroots political machine and left wing ideas that resonate well with a broad spectrum of the population, if the young cadres can win control of the party they could offer a serious challenge to United Russia. However, that is unlikely to happen before the September parliamentary elections take place.
2.1 Watcom shopping index off to a terrible start in 2021
Russia’s Watcom Shopping index got off to its worst start on record during the first three weeks of 2021.
20 RUSSIA Country Report March 2021 www.intellinews.com