As of: February 29, 2024, 4:02 a.m
By: Kilian Beck
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Press
Split
The Russian pseudo-opposition is conducting an election campaign that is taking on absurd elements.
An old communist waves a hammer and sickle over the Kremlin.
Putin talks about the “Russian bear”.
Moscow – Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to be confirmed in office in mid-March.
There have long been significant doubts about the legitimacy of elections in Russia.
Most recently, Spiegel
reported
on ongoing attempts to manipulate the result in Putin's favor.
Nevertheless, a kind of election campaign is underway, and it is taking on quite absurd aspects, as the
Moscow Times
reported.
The pseudo-opposition made up of Soviet-nostalgic communists, self-proclaimed “centrists” and right-wing radical nationalists spread completely empty election advertisements, while Putin was the “Russian bear” who would “never leave” the country if he was re-elected.
Vladimir Putin is orchestrating a relatively absurd sham election campaign.
© Alexander Zemlianichenko/Pool/dpa
Right-wing radical Slutsky does not want to be seen as an opponent of Putin
According to the newspaper, the leading candidate of the right-wing “liberal democratic” party, Leonid Slutsky, didn’t even bother to impersonate an opposition candidate: “A vote for Slutsky is definitely not a vote against Putin,” he said when announcing his candidacy.
Otherwise, the video was full of references to Slutsky's deceased predecessor Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
“Zhirinovsky’s legacy lives” is the core video.
What this means is illustrated by a suggestion from the deceased: in 2014, according to the
Reuters
news agency, he called for a partition of Ukraine along the lines of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, with which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union divided, invaded and occupied Poland during the Second World War
.
The centrist "New People's Party", which is completely irrelevant in the Duma with 15 of 450 seats, distributed a video in which its top candidate Vladislav Davankov painted the picture of a modern Russia and promised a "life in dignity in a peaceful country".
According to the New York Times,
the party
in Russia fulfills the purpose of a “pseudo-opposition” bloc party that, controlled by the Kremlin, makes a controlled offer for “young, liberal” Russians.
55-year-old Leonid Slutsky of Russia's far-right Liberal Democratic Party is also on the wish list of Putin's favorite opponents.
© IMAGO/Erik Romanenko
Old Russian communist lets the Soviet flag fly over the Kremlin
The Communist Party's top candidate had in mind a Russia like five decades ago: "We have played with capitalism, and now it's enough," said Nikolai Kharitonov
in his commercial, according to
the Moscow Times .
It showed “wheat fields, oil wells and a Soviet flag over the Kremlin”.
The 75-year-old, who comes from Siberia, has been sanctioned by the EU, Canada and the USA since February 2022, the
AFP news agency reported.
Vladimir Putin also mourned the Soviet Union in a speech in 2005: At that time, he described the collapse of the state as the “biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 21st century.”
Now he promised, at least in his election advertising: “The Russian bear will not leave the taiga behind.”
The
Moscow Times
sees this as a promise that the bear, Russia, will “keep fighting.”
This probably refers to Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine and the massive attacks on the Ukrainian civilian population.
Putin also wants to hold elections in occupied and annexed areas of the attacked country.
(KiBec)