Russian Election This Sunday (3/04/12)

[Dino Velvet]

Any thoughts or concerns? The return of Putin.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/02/world/europe/russia-elec-qa/index.html
http://articles.cnn.com/2012-02-29/world/world_europe_russia-election-primer_1_putin-s-united-russia-putin-years-dmitry-medvedev?_s=PM:EUROPE
http://www.cnn.com/2012/03/02/opinion/lynch-putin-russia/index.html

[Gouki]

Former KGB soldier gets his seat back

[Faldur]

"I will crush you.."

http://burntretina.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/dolph-lundgren-as-drago-will-crush-you.png

[buttslinger]

Well, what are the odds? He won!

[hippifried]

Putin may be an asshole, but he's their asshole. Apparently, they like him.

Being over here, I don't really know anything agout him. There's practically no actual information about him or his positions & thoughts on anything, & there's no punditry that can be trusted from any direction on any subject.

Concerns? Not really. I haven't seen any evidence that he's stupid or a fanatical ideologue.

[thx1138]

He's our mortal enemy. He believes in a multipolar world.

[hippifried]

Oh. Is that what he told you?

[Dino Velvet]

Hundreds arrested protesting Putin victory http://news.yahoo.com/photos/thousands-protest-putin-victory-slideshow/

http://beta.images.theglobeandmail.com/archive/01381/web-russia-prot_1381723cl-8.jpg

[thx1138]

Looks like there 's an "occupy the Kremlin" movement in Russia.

[Dino Velvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/russian-activist-detained-anti-putin-prayer-160151049.html

Russian activist detained for anti-Putin prayer

http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh_6AJBHy_uEbdrklkymA--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9Mjg-/http://l.yimg.com/os/152/2012/04/21/image001-png_162613.png (http://www.ap.org/)By MANSUR MIROVALEV | Associated Press – 3 hrs ago


MOSCOW (AP) — An opposition activist was detained and beaten Sunday after he tried to enter Moscow's landmark Christ the Savior Cathedral to pray to deliver Russia from Vladimir Putin.
Several riot police officers forced Roman Dobrokhotov into a police car just meters (feet) from Russia's largest church, widely seen as a symbol of resurgent Orthodox Christianity after seven decades of atheist Communist rule. Dobrokhotov, who leads a small anti-Kremlin youth movement, heckled President Dmitry Medvedev during his speech in the Kremlin in 2008.
Another activist, Mariya Baronova, of the Resistance anti-Kremlin group, entered the cathedral, but was cornered by a group of Orthodox priests and men who tried to escort her out.
A dozen activists from the militant Union of Orthodox Banner Bearers group lined up in front of the cathedral, shouting obscenities at Dobrokhotov and Baronova. The group is known for dispersing gay rallies, and for protesting against pop star Madonna's shows in Russia and burning Harry Potter books.
Hours later, when Dobrokhotov was leaving a police station where he was held, seven men assaulted him, damaging his ear, he said.
"They looked like soccer fans," he told The Associated Press, referring to burly and aggressive young men who are often involved in street fights and violence after soccer matches across Russia. "Luckily, police interrupted them and detained one of them."
Opposition leaders have long claimed that pro-Kremlin youth movements hire soccer fans to disperse anti-Kremlin rallies and beat up government critics.
The anti-Putin prayer followed a February prank by a feminist punk rock band.
Three members of the Pussy Riot band face up to seven years in jail for their February anti-Putin prayer at the cathedral. Their treatment provoked a public outcry and contributed to growing criticism of the church, a powerful institution with close ties to the Kremlin.
Russian Patriarch Kirill has described the punk performance as blasphemous, and part of a broader attack on the church. The patriarch has joined the Kremlin in portraying the recent wave of protests against Putin as a threat to Russian statehood.
Opposition protests drew tens of thousands onto the streets of Moscow in the months head of the March presidential election that gave Putin, currently serving as prime minister, a third presidential term. Putin's inauguration is set for May 7.

http://media.idahostatesman.com/smedia/2012/04/29/11/59/286-14HBt6.AuSt.55.jpg


http://media.idahostatesman.com/smedia/2012/04/29/11/59/679-DLIUj.AuSt.55.jpg

[hippifried]

I'd love to go over there & check out the architecture in person.

[Dino Velvet]

http://news.yahoo.com/russians-protest-over-putins-return-president-114254743.html

Russian police battle anti-Putin protesters

http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/tcYgB1aAYXLvk64BzSeLjQ--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9Zml0O2g9MjU-/http://l.yimg.com/os/595/2011/10/20/reuters-feature_140010.jpg (http://www.reuters.com/)By Alissa de Carbonnel and Maria Tsvetkova | Reuters – 4 hrs ago

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian riot police beat protesters about the head with batons and detained more than 400 on Sunday after clashes broke out at a Moscow rally by thousands of people against Vladimir Putin on the eve of his return to the presidency.
Opposition leaders Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov were among those detained during violence that showed the depth of divisions and tensions in Russia as the former KGB spy starts his six-year third term on Monday.
Police struck out with batons and hit several protesters on the head as they pushed back a crowd of thousands which advanced towards them holding white metal crowd barriers and throwing objects, Reuters reporters at the rally said.
The demonstrators fought back with flagpoles but police formed a line with riot shields to prevent them moving towards a bridge leading across the Moscow river to the Kremlin.
Riot police waded into the crowd in small groups with arms locked, picking out people and hauling them away, then pushed forward in lines to hem protesters in and disperse them.
"Putin has shown his true face, how he 'loves' his people - with police force," said Dmitry Gorbunov, 35, a computer analyst and one of many middle-class protesters who have joined protests against Putin in the past five months.
The violence came at the end of a day of protests in several cities against Putin, who will be sworn in at a lavish ceremony inside the Kremlin at which the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch Kirill, will bless him.
Many of the protesters are angry that Putin is extending his 12-year domination of Russia, despite being undermined by protests, and fear he will stifle political and economic reform in his third presidential term.
They are also frustrated that the same faces will continue ruling the world's largest country and energy producer, ignoring the biggest protests since Putin rose to power in 2000.
Four years after Putin ushered his ally Dmitry Medvedev into the Kremlin and became premier in 2008 because of constitutional term limits, the two have agreed to swap jobs, with Medvedev set to take Putin's position as prime minister.
"I trusted Putin as long as he ruled within the bounds of the constitution but our law limits the presidency to two consecutive terms. He and his clown Medvedev spat on that," said Andrey Asianov, a 44-year-old protester.
COFFIN OF DEMOCRACY
At least 20,000 people protested in Moscow under banners and flags, chanting "Russia without Putin" and "Putin - thief". Police said Udaltsov, Nemtsov and Navalny had been detained for "incitement to mass disorder".
Udaltsov, a leftist leader, was taken away as he tried to address the crowd from a stage and Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger, was dragged off after trying to organize a sit-in protest calling for Putin's inauguration to be scrapped.
In other protests, demonstrators carried a black coffin bearing the word "democracy" through the Pacific port city of Vladivostok. Several people were detained there and at protests in the Urals city of Kurgan and Kemerovo in western Siberia.
The Moscow protest was marred by the death of a photographer who Itar-Tass news said fell from a balcony as he tried to take pictures of the rally.
Health authorities said 20 police and 17 protesters sought medical help, including three police and 11 protesters who were hospitalized, Interfax reported. Most were later released.
The clashes were the worst since police moved in to disperse hundreds of protesters at or after rallies the day after Putin's March 4 election victory, which the opposition said was achieved with the aid of electoral fraud.
But the sting has gone out of protests since Putin, 59, won the election with almost 64 percent of the vote.
The former KGB spy simply ignored the protests. He looked relaxed as he attended a religious ceremony led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill that marked the transfer of a revered icon from a museum into the hands of the Church.
A few thousand Putin supporters attended a separate rally in Moscow that was intended to show he enjoys more support than the opposition, witnesses said.
"Democracy is the power of the majority. Russia is everything, the rest is nothing!" Alexander Dugin, a Kremlin-aligned nationalist, told the pro-Putin crowd.
Putin has dismissed allegations that widespread fraud helped him win the presidential election and secured victory for his United Russia party in a parliamentary poll in December, but the opposition says he was illegitimately elected.
Medvedev has pushed only limited political reforms through parliament following the protests, which at their height attracted tens of thousands of people in Moscow and St Petersburg but did not spread outside big cities.
The demonstrations have deprived Putin of his aura of invincibility, and opposition candidates have been trying to get a foothold on power in municipal elections, but the size of the protests on Sunday was unlikely to trouble the president-elect.
Even so, protesters said Sunday's rallies were another signal to Putin that Russia had changed as he returns to the Kremlin after four years absence, even if change was coming slowly two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Such protests were unthinkable until December, when anger over the electoral fraud allegations spilled over.
"Civil society is taking shaping little by little. People will concentrate more on local problems and change things from the bottom up. It's clear we aren't going to march on the Kremlin," said Maria Golinchuk, 25, a kindergarten teacher.
(Additional reporting by Alexei Anishchuk, Writing by Timothy Heritage; Editing by Alison Williams and Anna Willard)


http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/n6SIptIZ45gYqGny5ePRew--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zNTA7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-AE_XE/News/Reuters/2012-05-06T143304Z_1_CBRE84514F600_RTROPTP_2_INTERNATIONAL-US-RUSSIA-PROTESTS.JPG http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/2nfzQAqkDe65o7xG2KSwFw--/YXBwaWQ9eW5ld3M7Zmk9aW5zZXQ7aD0zMTc7cT04NTt3PTQ1MA--/http://media.zenfs.com/en-AE_XE/News/Reuters/2012-05-06T142226Z_2_CBRE8450WJP00_RTROPTP_2_INTERNATIONAL-US-RUSSIA-PROTESTS.JPG

[hippifried]

...As long as they don't burn the Kremlin. The onion domes are cool.

[Dino Velvet]

...As long as they don't burn the Kremlin. The onion domes are cool.

The Borscht would hit the fan for sure if something happened.

[robertlouis]

It will be interesting to see how the White House deals with the strategic overtures that Vlad is now making. Diplomatic tightrope doesn't even begin to describe it. First point, of course, should be that the Russians have to drop their support for the Assad regime in Syria.