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00:00:24Hello, this is a special broadcast about the elections to the State Duma of Russia. Voting is
00:00:27scheduled for the eighteenth,
00:00:3020th of September. The main conditions of this campaign are already
00:00:33known. The federal list of Yabloko - the only party that
00:00:37opposes the war - has been removed from the elections. The independent
00:00:40observer movement Golos has ceased its work. Russia has not invited
00:00:44OSCE observers. And the bureau itself speaks of restrictions
00:00:47on political participation, persecution of opponents, and weakening of public
00:00:51control. Voting will take place in the occupied territories
00:00:55of Ukraine. Kyiv and international organizations consider it
00:00:58illegal. And this is the context without which it is impossible
00:01:02to talk about the results, so we are interested not only in who
00:01:05will be on the ballot and who will be declared victorious. It is important to understand what this
00:01:09procedure should show to Russian society, to the elites,
00:01:13to the outside world, and what decisions will follow after it. We
00:01:16will start with this question. We asked politicians, researchers,
00:01:20and former observers, if the outcome seems predictable, then
00:01:24why is it still important to follow these elections, this
00:01:28voting. This is a time of great
00:01:32turbulence for these authorities, although they have cleared the field
00:01:35so much that I don't even understand how anyone
00:01:38can be missed here, how someone
00:01:42who doesn't suit the Kremlin can slip through. Any elections to the State
00:01:45Duma, unlike presidential ones, so-called elections, are
00:01:49still the establishment of a new balance. Different
00:01:53groups try to include their people in the lists
00:01:56through different factions of one large ruling party,
00:02:00which are called United Russia, KPRF, LDPR, New
00:02:03People. That is, for the authorities, in a functional sense, it is
00:02:07a test of loyalty and effectiveness, the ability
00:02:11of regional elites to control
00:02:13the situation on the ground. There are regions, of course, where they will draw whatever they
00:02:16want, especially without opposition. There are regions
00:02:19where they won't draw whatever they want, even, well, there won't even be such an
00:02:23order. It is obvious that the authorities, of course, have all the
00:02:26opportunities to falsify the elections, to
00:02:30draw the desired result. But things are smooth on paper,
00:02:34but they often forget about the pitfalls, because in this
00:02:38case, the authorities may face strong
00:02:41social protest, as there was, for example, in 2011-2012.
00:02:45Well, the answers are different, but they have a common idea: the percentages that the
00:02:49CEC announces are not the only result of the elections. The admitted
00:02:53candidates, the campaign themes, people's behavior, and
00:02:56the decisions that will be made after the voting also matter.
00:03:00But for the voter, a practical question remains: what to do with
00:03:03the ballot if he does not believe in an honest count? My colleague Andrey
00:03:07Tsyganov has collected the main proposals and initiatives of the Russian opposition. He is
00:03:10with us in the studio. Andrey, hello. Hello. Andrey, so what does the Russian
00:03:14opposition, those politicians who have left the country, propose to do? Well,
00:03:18you know, the general idea, if we simplify it strongly, comes down to the fact that despite
00:03:21everything, you need to go and vote, although, as the oppositionists admit, there is no pleasant
00:03:25choice in these elections.
00:03:28Well, before I tell you about the strategies, I will briefly remind you why
00:03:32the opposition leaders, as one, say that one must go to the polling stations,
00:03:35literally, holding one's nose. This is a quote. At least in what
00:03:39concerns the war, all parties that have a chance to enter the Duma
00:03:43are maximally similar. United Russia, well, everything is clear here,
00:03:46absolute support for the so-called SVO. In addition, it is from the ruling
00:03:50party that direct participants in the war, among others, go to the elections,
00:03:54the so-called veterans and war correspondents. I had such a
00:03:57feeling, as if life itself was preparing
00:04:00us for the SVO, the whole country,
00:04:04Lord, life, they were leading to the fact that
00:04:08we would have to fight so hard.
00:04:11Let's move on, KPRF. According to the communists, Russia is fighting
00:04:15in Ukraine, no more, no less, with NATO fascism and American
00:04:18hegemonism. Without the Russian core, our
00:04:22power will not stand, just as Ukraine did not stand,
00:04:26having turned into a Nazi one. In the end,
00:04:29today we are obliged to defeat NATO
00:04:33fascism and Banderaism.
00:04:35LDPR, Leonid Slutsky and the faction deputies are categorically against
00:04:39any peace negotiations until Russian troops reach
00:04:42Odesa. We will achieve
00:04:45our main goal in the very foreseeable future,
00:04:49the solution of our main task, a great
00:04:52victory. Just Russia, they have on their agenda
00:04:55a full mobilization of society and the economy.
00:04:58The FBK calls for voting for any
00:05:43party except United Russia, and suggests treating the elections themselves
00:05:46as the only remaining protest event in
00:05:50Russia. Despite all the reservations, the elections
00:05:53are dishonest, unfree, falsified, dirty and unrelated
00:05:55to elections, these are still "elections" in quotes.
00:05:59Nevertheless, even "elections" in quotes remain
00:06:03the only permitted protest event in Russia.
00:06:06The logic of the FBK: several parties in the Duma are better than
00:06:09one, there is a greater chance that at some opportune moment, the conditional Mironov
00:06:13or Zyuganov will suddenly refuse to vote as the Kremlin
00:06:16needs. By no means, God forbid, I do not call on you
00:06:19to vote for the KPRF, nor for the New People, nor for the
00:06:23LDPR, I only call on you to vote against United
00:06:27Russia. But there is no such line on the ballot against United Russia,
00:06:30therefore we take and make voting for these
00:06:33three disgusting parties a vote against United Russia. In
00:06:37single-mandate districts, the FBK proposes smart voting.
00:06:40The candidate with the highest chances of defeating
00:06:44the United Russia member. I'll say right away, this candidate
00:06:47will not be an angel, he will not even be simply good,
00:06:50but it does not matter to us who he is, we want to upset the plans
00:06:54of the Kremlin, they expect that their candidates from
00:06:58United Russia will win, but someone else wins. United Russia members
00:07:01are sad, and we are happy about it. Maxim Katz also
00:07:05campaigns for participation in voting. He created a website with a detailed analysis
00:07:09of candidates and parties. I studied each candidate myself
00:07:12and asked for advice from people who understand
00:07:16the relevant regions and parties, and
00:07:19then I wrote everything related to
00:07:22politics myself, from the first to the last letter. Descriptions
00:07:26of each candidate, each party and later, analysis of the situation in
00:07:30the districts, and my reasoned recommendation on who
00:07:34to vote for. Well, that is, in some sense, it is also smart
00:07:37voting. On his website, Katz suggests studying candidates and
00:07:40making a conscious choice, and not just against United Russia, and promises to give
00:07:44his own recommendations on where and for whom to vote. Yes, to choose
00:07:48without any pleasure from dubious personalities, mostly,
00:07:52you will have to. But refusing to choose only plays into the hands of the system.
00:07:55Go to my website, compare the positions
00:07:59of the nominated politicians, look at what is happening in your
00:08:02districts, think about how to cast your vote.
00:08:05Mikhail Khodorkovsky is traditionally against smart voting as
00:08:09such, saying that for him the main thing is an anti-war stance
00:08:12can change something. We can only change it if Ukraine wins. To believe that of the candidate, and not just his chances against United Russia. It is extremely
00:08:16dangerous to tell people that let's
00:08:19vote against this party of war, but for
00:08:22another party of war. But Khodorkovsky promises to present his
00:08:26own voting strategy at the last moment before the elections. Garry
00:08:29Kasparov has also long called for a boycott of the elections. He believes
00:08:33that something can only be changed in Russia
00:08:37we in Ukraine.
00:10:12It's clear, for any party except United Russia,
00:10:16and then let each citizen
00:10:19decide for themselves which box to mark on the ballot,
00:10:23but the main thing is that it should not be United Russia.
00:10:25Elections are the last, the last legal
00:10:28opportunity to express one's position, coming to the elections cannot
00:10:32be considered as, I don't know,
00:10:34some kind of sabotage, yes,
00:10:38or some kind of crime, and so on,
00:10:42so I don't know, honestly, I understand that
00:10:45the Russian repressive machine is cunning enough to
00:10:49come up with, yes, how these people can be charged under some article, but to me
00:10:52it seems , well, it seems extremely difficult.
00:10:56Of course, each person makes their own decision, yes, this is our
00:11:00initiative, which we promote to
00:11:03the masses, if you are not
00:11:06afraid, if you believe that everything will be
00:11:10okay, nothing will happen to you, which
00:11:13should not happen in theory, then, of course, come. If you see
00:11:17any risks in this, then of course, no one
00:11:20will force anyone, everything is left
00:11:22to the conscience of the person who
00:11:26makes the decision. And I will add that I also asked Katerina Keltau
00:11:29whether the Peaceful Russia party calls on residents of the occupied
00:11:32territories of Ukraine to come to the polling stations at noon. Katerina
00:11:35said that this was not separately discussed by the organizers, but those who wish
00:11:39can take part in the action there.
00:11:43We continue our broadcast. Let's talk about why these
00:11:46elections, which will be held in September, are important and for whom they are important in the first
00:11:50place. Political scientist Ivan Preobrazhensky is with us in the studio. Ivan,
00:11:53hello. Good afternoon, thank you for the invitation, thank you for finding
00:11:56time, and Dmitry Oreshkin is with us from the Riga studio. Dmitry Borisych,
00:12:00hello.
00:12:03Good afternoon, hello, thank you very much for finding time to talk about
00:12:07this. I would like to ask Ivan, you first, why are these
00:12:10elections important in Russia, what do you think? Well, there are
00:12:14several reasons. First of all, I am against
00:12:18calling this elections. I always say "special electoral
00:12:21operation". Accordingly, the Kremlin...
00:14:25The elections, in my opinion, are controlled not by Kremlin administrators or
00:14:29political strategists, as Sergei Kiriyenko and his ilk call them, but
00:14:32directly by the special services, the FSB. The FSB was officially
00:14:35appointed as curators of these elections at meetings in the Kremlin
00:14:39around spring of this year. And the question is
00:14:42who will retain control over domestic politics after these
00:14:46elections? This is a fundamental point, because after
00:14:502012, gradually the Kremlin returned itself.
00:14:53Ivan said that
00:15:26this is a demonstration of loyalty,
00:15:29but it
00:15:31is also a message from above that everything is in
00:15:35order in the country, elections are being held.
00:17:07But they will draw, conditionally, it actually got 15 and
00:17:11they will have to add up to 60 or it actually got 50
00:17:15they will have to add up to 60. In this case, it
00:17:18is important,
00:17:20it is important, of course, to add painless votes across
00:17:23the country. Painless means not
00:17:26traumatizing public consciousness, not causing public
00:17:30protests, bewilderment, irritation. One can add
00:17:3415-20%, which means, accordingly, if...
00:18:07there is simply a vulgar qualification of falsification, and
00:18:11there is administrative pressure on, say, public sector employees
00:18:14who will come and vote electronically so as
00:18:18not to spoil relations with their boss. It is absolutely irrelevant
00:18:22that they might even be against it, but nobody wants to lose their job,
00:18:25nobody wants problems with their boss either. They will come and vote, and
00:18:29we will be forced to consider this as
00:18:32a genuine expression of will, because it does not mean that the result is fabricated,
00:18:35it means that people...
00:19:37has prepared even more thoroughly than in previous
00:19:40years. There will be no observers, in fact, at all,
00:19:44the opportunities for observing the elections are minimized
00:19:48almost to zero, electronic voting,
00:19:51uncontrolled by anyone and in any way, allows
00:19:54simply by pressing a few buttons to
00:19:57change the official
00:19:59results. The situation
00:20:02of war and repression, which is intensifying every
00:20:06year, will lead to... because the price of protest
00:20:09will be so high that most likely there will be no protests.
00:20:13The question is only how, but this is no longer about the so-called
00:20:17elections themselves, it's about what will happen after them,
00:20:20how it will be legitimized. In 2011, the whole society
00:20:24believed that the elections were totally falsified, regardless of
00:20:28whether people supported the authorities or not, even those who
00:20:31supported them believed that, in general, it was falsified and they did the right
00:20:35thing, because these damned... national
00:20:38traitors, you know, tried to prevent Vladimir Vladimirovich
00:20:42Putin from returning to the presidency to save
00:20:44the country. And accordingly, now
00:20:47the story is roughly about the same thing: who will
00:20:51believe these final results or not. This is about the interpretation
00:20:54of the results of these so-called elections. A fairly active
00:20:58struggle will take place over this, and the story
00:21:01with Yabloko, no, it actually could
00:21:04have significantly impacted this potentially if
00:21:07the pseudo-electoral campaign in support of Yabloko
00:21:10had grown into a campaign for peace, because we haven't mentioned
00:21:14another important point, we haven't said that this is
00:21:17still... some kind of expression of attitude towards the war that
00:21:21Russia continues to wage against Ukraine, Yabloko's attempt
00:21:24to register, and
00:21:28those who call themselves oppositionists
00:21:31outside Russia to support Yabloko, this
00:21:35was an attempt to turn the pseudo-elections, the Kremlin's
00:21:39spectacle, into a real discussion
00:21:42about whether to stop the war at last. Yabloko
00:21:45could have become a symbol of the struggle against the war, but Yabloko itself...
00:21:49unfortunately, is not, in the
00:21:52understanding, let's say, objectively, a truly
00:21:55anti-war party, because their position is to equate
00:21:58the victim and the aggressor, that is, Russia and
00:22:02Ukraine in their positions. Grigory
00:22:06Yavlinsky's statements about the war
00:22:09rather say, "Let's finally all sit down and
00:22:13agree." Overall, they can
00:22:17fit into the Kremlin's narrative in this sense.
00:23:50Don't be mistaken, sitting in your own information bubble, those who
00:23:54support Putin, there are many of them, they will vote for him.
00:23:57Secondly, there is a falsification overlay
00:24:00that will add all this on top. So,
00:24:04the talk that if everyone suddenly doesn't
00:24:08show up, then the elections will collapse, is a simple
00:24:11self-deception. The majority of the opposition or,
00:24:14let's say, negatively critical electorate will not go to these
00:24:18elections...
00:24:50I've said 1,500
00:24:53times that a spoiled ballot is counted, unlike a
00:24:56ballot that has been taken away. A ballot that has been taken away is
00:25:00simply zero, because votes are counted from
00:25:04ballots found in ballot boxes.
00:25:07I think that those who come
00:25:10to spoil ballots are unlikely to make up more than
00:25:135%. Therefore, even if
00:25:16they made up 5%, since they are not a legal party,
00:25:20their votes will be distributed among
00:25:23the winners, that is, if, say,
00:25:265% of voters spoil
00:25:29their ballots, then about 40% of
00:25:33these 5% will eventually go into
00:25:36United Russia's piggy bank. In presidential elections
00:25:39it's not like that, they don't split votes, there's one winner, so there's
00:25:43a functional reason to invalidate
00:25:46the ballot, that way you add another one...
00:27:02There are no delusions here, but in this
00:27:05way, you can slightly, very
00:27:09little, but spoil the mood of those who
00:27:12organize this procedure of the electoral ritual.
00:27:15Dmitry Borisovich, thank you. Ivan, what do you think
00:27:18, after all, what concept, in your opinion, what would you do? I am sure
00:27:22that no, none of the options listed by anyone from
00:27:26the representatives of those who consider themselves opposition
00:27:30outside Russia is an option.
00:29:32No, what will influence is whether this message, which has almost
00:29:36faded away now, of the struggle
00:29:39for peace, which Yabloko raised when
00:29:42it tried to enter these elections and register, will be preserved.
00:29:45If the population sees that there is some
00:29:48minimal chance to end the war, no, I don't believe
00:29:52Russian sociology, but I agree with the fact that the majority, more than half
00:29:56of the Russian population, for various reasons, wants the war to
00:29:59end. No, maybe they want it to end with Russia's victory,
00:30:03but one way or another, as quickly as possible.
00:30:06So, as soon as the population sees this minimal
00:30:09opportunity, it will immediately go to this point, as it was with Yabloko,
00:30:13whose rating began to grow rapidly, even among those who
00:30:17had never heard of this party's name among
00:30:20young people. Accordingly, this is what
00:30:23we need to fight for, for this anti-war message to
00:30:27survive in some way, probably creating it in such a way,
00:30:30if there is a ritual from the side.