If Russian Presidential Elections were Held Now, The Results Would Be Different and Both Putin and the People Know It, Blogger Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 28 – In the wake of the Kemerovo fire and Putin’s less than stellar response, it is quite clear that if Russia’s presidential elections were held today, their results would be very different and that both the powers that be and the Russian people are aware of that fact, according to Crimean blogger Aleksandr Gorny.

            And because that is the case, the Russian people are “ready to take up their pitchforks” against those in power; and those in power are concerned only about their own survival and pleasing those above rather than those below them, he says, arguing that Kemerovo will leave “an indelible stain” on Putin for the next six years (echo.msk.ru/blog/amountain/2173518-echo/).

                How far things will go in the direction of or even to the point of a merciless Russian revolt and its likely subsequent suppression will depend, Gorny says, on the decisions the Kremlin leader makes in the coming days or “more precisely” on those he is likely going to be “forced to accept.” 

            And this is the result not just of the Kemerovo fire, he continues. “Tragedies periodically occur but to everything there is a limit. In recent days a feeling of darkness and despair has been growing. Protests in Volokolamsk, the tragedy in Kemerovo, the scandal with Slutsky, and the reactions of the Duma, the Kemerovo officials, and the foreign diplomatic boycott – all this which at first glance looks to be quite unrelated has common roots.”

            “This is the deepest systemic crisis, which our basic rights as citizens are being violated and when the powers are losing the sense of reality … and aren’t able to control the situation among their own fucking fat cats.” And still worse, it has become obvious that those in power “at all levels” consider the people “an electoral swamp” and “journalists as servants.”

            One can only be put off by Putin’s meeting with officials because it becomes obvious that all of them are only “trying to save their own skins.”  And Russians can see that “the corporation ‘Untied Russia’ and Co. have seized not only the State Duma but all of Russia” in order to turn it into “their feeding trough.”

            According to Gorny, the Duma needs to be prorogued, the emergency services ministry needs to be reformed from top to bottom, judicial reforms need to be implemented, lustration needs to be carried out, “and the long bloody work for the restoration of the country” needs to begin.

            “I do not know what the result of presidential elections would be if they were conducted now after these scandals and tragedies,” the blogger says. “But they would be significantly different. The powers understand this and namely they, thank God, have not decided now to prohibit spontaneous, unsanctioned meetings and acts of protest by citizens.””  

            Gorny says he “does not want a revolution, but Vladimir Putin must in short order restructure the system or else there will be a revolt against the existing system of power, which will overthrow him personally along with others. We are a step from this; the next step will be into the abyss” (stress supplied).

            For the moment, Russians still believe in Putin even if they do not believe in anyone else. But as the system decays, he too is thus at risk, the blogger suggests.  “Russia,” he says, “wake up!”