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Most of the respondents (56%) support the removal of restrictions, of which 35.6% believe that they should have been removed earlier.
By the end of May, despite the self-isolation lockdown 46.2% of Russians went to work, visited a grocery store (81.2%) or a pharmacy (56.5%).
In the month since the end of April, the proportion of people who go for a walk has tripled - from 12.3 to 38.7%. The number of those who meet with friends has grown in a similar way - from 6.7 to 21%.
The lockdown is also having a growing affect on incomes. A third of respondents in late May said that incomes remained at the same level, down from 59.4% in March. Of those who have seen incomes fall a third (31.8%) say it has fallen significantly. However, since the beginning of April, the number of people who had completely lost their income decreased from 23.7 to 13.5% in May.
According to the study, the Southern Federal District leads the survey by the percentage of people who consider the epidemic a fabrication - 41.1%. More than 60% of the district respondents believe that there should be less restrictions during the epidemic and that the restrictions should have been removed earlier (42.7%). At the same time, the region is in second place in terms of the number of respondents who either completely lost their income or it decreased significantly - 52.1%. Most of the respondents who faced a significant decrease in income or completely lost it were in the North Caucasus Federal District (53.8%).
2.10 Four new political parties created, receive right to run in regional elections
Four political parties created in recent months have now deployed regional headquarters in more than half of Russia’s regions and received the right to participate in elections, Vedomosti reported in the last week of May.
Back in late 2019, the arrival of these new organizations was largely seen as an attempt by the Kremlin to give the appearance of increased competition in future elections. This, of course, is nothing new. But it’s worth taking a look at the parties, if only to get a hint of the lens through which the Kremlin approaches political issues, in this case by attempting to create “cool” versions of previous political projects:
“For Truth”: the party’s communication still largely centres on its founder, writer and national-Bolshevik personality Zakhar Prilepin. Its platform is both anti-capitalist and nationalist, advocating in its program the annexation of the Ukrainian Donbas region to Russia (the party is also planning to set up offices in the Donbas, as well as in Abkhazia and South Ossetia). It is in that sense closest to LDPR, with a bit of Communist party ideology mixed in.
“New People” and “Party of Direct Democracy”: these two parties are slight variations on attempts to attract a young, urban, middle-class electorate that the Kremlin sees as the most likely to protest. “New People,” created by the head of a cosmetics company, targets more specifically business-oriented people (think of a cooler “Party of Growth”), while the “Direct Democracy” party, made by the creator of popular video game “World of Tanks,” is all about IT and digitalization. From the platform to the design of their websites, it’s clear both parties are looking to mimic Alexei Navalny’s style.
21 RUSSIA Country Report June 2020 www.intellinews.com
