What's Driving those Russian Protests?

Tens of thousands of Russian citizens are protesting against Vladimir Putin, demanding both fair elections and his removal from office. On the surface, these sound like righteous protests. But are they? Some of the protesters are likening themselves to the OWS and former Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev is siding with the protesters on the issue of Putin stepping down.

Nonetheless, if this many people are protesting rigged elections, it can't be all bad.

According to The Independent, 100,000 protesters weathered the cold to join in the protests:

The rally on Moscow's Sakharov Avenue on Saturday was the fourth and by far the biggest of the mass demonstrations provoked by the parliamentary vote held on 4 December. The ruling United Russia party, led by the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, held on to a slim majority in parliament in those elections, but the results have been tainted by claims of wholesale fraud.

The demonstrators stood for hours in sub-zero weather on Saturday listening to a line-up of speakers as diverse as the crowd itself, including TV celebrities, writers, musicians, politicians, scientists and a jailed dissident whose video message was broadcast on a giant screen beside the stage.

"The people are waking up," said Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Left Front opposition group who was arrested on the day of the elections as he heading to a rally. "The people have stopped putting up with this humiliating regime."

First of all, I'd feel much more comfortable saying Russian government is far more corrupt than American government if it was ten years ago but it's still worse. Second, Mr. Udaltsov's claim that the people are "waking up," already puts them in front of OWS, whose members like to channel zombies. Third, Russian protesters are standing up against their government; OWS wants more of it.

In short, if these protesters in Russia are carrying the spirit of the Bolsheviks, they'd be better off just packing up and going home because they'll get far worse than what they have; that revolution gave them Lenin. Then again, OWS might just be closer to the early 20th Century Bolsheviks than are these early 21st Century Russian protesters. It's simply too hard to tell how the situation in Russia will shake out but if the participants were smart, they'd distance themselves from Gorbachev right now.

The movements don't seem to have all that much in common when you look at the granular detail but OWS may have helped to inspire protests in Russia, which would be a good thing if they're protesting Vladimir Putin's continued reign.

Perhaps the Russian establishment is partly to blame as its propaganda arm - Russia Today - has been promoting OWS, for reasons that likely involve the damage it's doing to the US.

It'd be poetic justice if that backfired on them.

h/t Drudge

WIKILEAKS: CABLES SHOW GEORGE W. BUSH WRONG ABOUT PUTIN

The inclination to say that the release of Wikileaks cables was 100% bad is misguided. Case in point is what has been revealed about Russia. Again, much of it is not surprising but it does prove what most of us suspected. An example might be the plane crash in Smolensk that killed the Polish president. Many, myself included, are suspicious of foul play but it's not proven.

In any event, the cables verify what many of us knew about Putin's Russia. Via The Guardian:

Russia is a corrupt, autocratic kleptocracy centred on the leadership of Vladimir Putin, in which officials, oligarchs and organised crime are bound together to create a "virtual mafia state", according to leaked secret diplomatic cables that provide a damning American assessment of its erstwhile rival superpower.

Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus: the cables paint a bleak picture of a political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300bn a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of the government and organised crime.

Putin also didn't like him and his right-hand man Dimitri Medvedev being likened to the fictional superhero tandem of Batman and Robin:

He made clear he was not amused by a US diplomat's description of him as "Batman" and President Dmitry Medvedev as "Robin". "To be honest with you, we did not suspect that this [criticism] could be made with such arrogance, with such rudeness, and you know, so unethically," Putin remarked.

One of the cables also seemed to confirm that U.S. diplomats believed the death of Alexander Litvinenko, caused by a small dose of Polonium-210, may have been ordered by Putin.

Litvinenko Case
---------------
6. (S) Fried commented that the short-term trend inside Russia was negative, noting increasing indications that the UK investigation into the murder of Litvinenko could well point to some sort of Russian involvement. MGM called attention to Chirac's statement encouraging the Russians to cooperate in the investigation. He wondered aloud who might have given the order, but speculated the murder probably involved a settling of accounts between services rather than occurring under direct order from the Kremlin. Fried, noting Putin's attention to detail, questioned whether rogue security elements could operate, in the UK no less, without Putin's knowledge. Describing the current atmosphere as strange, he described the Russians as increasingly self-confident, to the point of arrogance.

After the plane crash in Smolensk last April, I wrote about why Russia should have faced scrutiny.

h/t to Verum Serum

POLISH JOURNALIST POINTS TO RUSSIAN COVER-UP

I've said it before but it bears repeating when a report from a Polish journalist who chooses to remain anonymous for his own safety, echoes claims that Russia is not being transparent with respect to its investigation into the plane crash that killed the Polish president and 95 top government officials last April. A writer for Big Peace, who goes by the name Sun Tzu has published the report from the Polish journalist:

Via Big Peace:

On April 9th the plane crash killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski, his ministers, the Army’s highest commanders, members of Parliament and many other officials in Smolensk, Russia. President Kaczynski and his delegates flew to pay homage to 22,000 Polish officers murdered in Katyn forests near Smolensk by the Russians in the biggest still unpunished war crime.

The first president who offered his condolences to the Polish nation in the face of the death of their best leaders was Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. He took Poles, who were in a state of deep shock after the loss of their president and 95 high state officials, by surprise and in an hour after the catastrophe as he established himself as the leader of an investigative committee.

I've also said before that if this was an accident, it virtually defied astronomical odds when you factor in all of the tragically ironic coincidences that must have taken place. When doing so, those odds almost necessarily must be astronomically longer than odds that the crash was the result of foul play.

All that being said, there is one thing that would greatly silence the conspiracy theorists. That one thing would be complete transparency from Putin and friends. After reading this report in full, it becomes obvious that Russia is not being all that forthcoming with the evidence.

In my view, that alone gives credence to those who suspect foul play, especially when mathematical odds are factored into the equation.

Read it all.

PLANE CRASH: POLISH OFFICIAL BLAMES RUSSIA

The London Daily Mail is reporting that Polish MP Artur Gorski is pointing the finger at Russia with respect to the plane crash that killed Polish president Lech Kaczynski and several top officials on April 10th.

Via the Mail:

'One version of events says that the plane approached the airport four times, because every time the Russians refused it permission to land - they wanted to send the plane with the president to an airport in Moscow or Minsk,' Mr Gorski claimed in an interview published in the newspaper Nasz Dziennik.

'They came up with some dubious reasons: that there was fog over the airport, and that the navigation system didn't work as it was under renovation, and that airport had a short landing strip.'

The longer the tragic irony and macabre coincidences of this crash continue to be noticed, the more Poland is going to demand answers. It is for this reason that it is absolutely imperative for Russia to be 100% transparent with this investigation. As I said here, skepticism is sure to supercede trust considering both Putin's track record as well as the fact that he is the one overseeing the investigation.

h/t to Drudge

ANOTHER QUESTIONABLE PLANE CRASH IN RUSSIA

When Boris Yeltsin resigned on December 31st, 1999 former KGB member Vladimir Putin assumed the role of acting President of the Russian Federation. He has been the face of the man leading Russia ever since. On March 3rd, 2000 - just over two months later - a man named Artyom Borovik was killed in a plane crash shortly after takeoff from a Moscow airport. Borovik was a journalist and he apparently had ruffled quite a few feathers.

Via Highbeam:

A plane crash that claims nine lives is always going to be a tragedy. But when it happens in the midst of a season of Russian political intrigue, and when two of the victims are prominent men with plenty of enemies, it takes on a whole new dimension.

Borovik was the first in a long line of Russian journalists who have died under Putin's reign. In fact, as of March 11th, 2007 - when a man named Andrew Osborn chronicled them - the number had reached 20. The first of those 20 was apparently Borovik:

Artyom Borovik

Senior executive at investigative magazine 'Completely Secret' that exposed the misdeeds of the rich and powerful. Died on 3 March 2000 in a plane crash that the authorities believe may not have been accidental.

Via Osborn's piece at the Independent:

Shot, stabbed or poisoned, the journalists have two things in common: no one has been convicted, or in most cases even arrested, after their deaths. And all of them had angered powerful vested interests which appear to suffer little restraint in dealing with their enemies.

Osborn interviewed a man named Oleg Panfilov for the article, who is identified as president of the Moscow-based Centre for Journalism in Extreme Situations (CJES).

Mr Panfilov makes a direct link between such intimidation and the presidency. "The problem is with Putin himself," he said. "He showed his true colours with Politkovskaya's death." In the eyes of many, he appeared dismissive and slow to react. "Putin takes pleasure in launching verbal attacks on journalists," Mr Panfilov went on. "It is he who defines the atmosphere in which we work."

I talked about this more extensively here. In a span of 10 years, at least 20 Russian journalists have died on Putin's watch. No one was convicted in connection with those deaths. One of them died in a plane crash. A common thread they all shared was work exposing corruption, shady dealings, criminal investigations, etc. - all things that would likely put them in direct opposition to someone like Putin.

Read it all.