Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance

This was demonstrated in the legislative elections of the last year: the government was criticized for making access difficult the to opposing parties, for raising the minimum number of votes to obtain chairs in the parliament (of 5% to7%), and for lowering the minimum amount of voters to consider a lawsuit valid, and for support of the state to United Russia party, that got more than 60% of the votes. But only the last criticism is really valid, since no party (besides the four that got chairs in the parliament) even reached 3% of the votes, and this though the voters' number that they announced in the last lawsuit has been larger than in the previous one. There are strong signs of irregularities in these elections (as, for example, that United Russia has received 99 % of the votes in Chechnya), but not that the results are universally invalid. The last elections confirmed that the opposition in Russia is fragile not so much for obstacles placed by the government (they exist but are not insurmountable), but because they have no appeal among the majority of the population.

	Eight years of Putin in the Russian Presidency: A balance
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The movement "Another Russia" is the opposing group that most seduces the west and attracts the attention of the media, which shows it as a grouping of liberal forces against the Putin regime. It is not totally the truth. It is an amorphous group, where fragmented organizations exist that defend democracy and human rights, but also extreme right and left, including the controversial (and forbidden) National-Bolshevik (a distorted Frankenstein of Marxist and Nazi remains). They do not share any common ideology, values or common proposals, and the only thing that joins them is opposition to the current government. More coherent parties of opposition, like Yabloko and the Communists refused to join this coalition.

Be that as it may, the movement, "Another Russia" is the opposing group that wins most space in the western environment, thanks to their protest marches and the police action that nearly always follows. Nothing justifies the repression against unarmed demonstrators, but also it is necessary to say that the members of Another Russia intentionally carry out marches where they did not receive authorization and they cut the traffic in Moscow or St. Petersburg, looking to provoke police action. Considering that it has almost no appeal among the population, this seems to this one to be its principal tactics to attract attention. Moreover, the authorities
do not only restrain the unauthorized marches of movements of the opposition: in January some members of the group Nashi (Ours, in Russian), pro-Kremlin, were detained and this organization received a fine for protesting in front of a representation of the European Union without authorization.

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