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Eastern Europe
June 30, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
the Soviet collapse. Anger also at the hijacking
of the electoral process boiled over in 2011 after ballot stuffing handed control of the State Duma’s lower chamber of parliament to the Kremlin-loyal United Russia party.
But the idea that passions stemming from these and a raft of other issues – poverty, low wages, road tolls, housing demolition, to name a few – can coalesce into a single credible challenge headed by Navalny or any other current opposition figure makes for better overseas newspaper copy than reality.
Some who have sought to unite the Russian op- position like ex-premier Mikhail Kasyanov have been neutralised, in his case through the release of stills from a sex tape in 2016. A year earlier for- mer deputy prime minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was shot dead near the Krem-
lin. Five Chechens, two with links to the security forces of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, were on June 29 found guilty of carrying out the assas- sination, but whoever ordered it was not found and is not expected to be.
None of this means Putin will have an easy ride once reinstalled in the Kremlin as expected next March. Teenagers who have known no other president in their lives are increasingly joining
the protests, bringing a fresh generation into the fray. And while economic growth has resumed after more than two years of recession, poverty too is rising. The number of people living below the poverty line in Russia rose to 23.4mn last year, up from 15.5mn in 2013, according to the World Bank. The bank also said 13.5% of Russians live on less than RUB10,000 (€148) per month, against an average wage of RUB39,000.
At Putin’s June 14 stage-managed televised ques- tion and answer session, negative questions
and comments that awkwardly appeared on the broadcast’s ticker tape remind that all is not Putin- peachy in Russia. “The whole country thinks you’ve sat too long on the throne,” wrote one citizen.
“The real challenge will be the mismatch between the expectations of the Russian people and the decisions that the regime will have to make after the election,” writes Alexey Makarkin, political analyst and first vice-president of Russia’s Center for Political Technologies. “The expectations are not unreasonably high: Russians do not envisage mountains of gold, but they do expect their mate- rial standing to at least not deteriorate, and ideally improve. The outlook for GDP growth (or, to be more precise, economic stagnation) and the fiscal situation, however, are such that anything other than deterioration appears unlikely.”
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