Blog post by Boris Vishnevsky, 6.12.2021

Photo by BerksiuS_Ukr / depositphotos

The main event of the 20th congress of the [ruling] United Russia [party] is neither the re-election of [former Russian President and former PM] Dmitry Medvedev as Chairman of the party (but everyone understands that it is not he who is leading the party).

Nor small and meaningless personnel changes.

Nor the usual Putin demagogy – that allegedly “United Russia performed well during the election campaign” [in the parliamentary elections in September 2021], “won confidently, with a good margin” “once again demonstrating that the party is the rightfully a party-winner” (but we know thing song: we know too well how this “victory” was forged and what falsifications ensured this “advantage”).

The main thing is the solemn handing out of United Russia party cards to the war lords of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic and (LNR), the marionette “republics” [in Eastern Ukraine] which no one recognized.

Just think about it: the war lords of unrecognised marionette “republics” are solemnly announced as members of the ruling party.

But in reality, they are the proxy rulers of the territories, who were torn away from Ukraine by means of a military revolt organised by the Russian authorities and the Russian military. And who mockingly demand from the Ukrainian authorities to sit down with them at the negotiating table and “negotiate on neighborhood and proximity”.

The demonstrative handing out of party cards to them is a clear demonstration of the intensified aggressive intentions towards Ukraine, which Putin cynically denied sovereignty in his July article, and about the government of which Medvedev spoke in an openly offensive tone in his October article.

But those were just words, but the time for deeds might come.

They need to somehow compensate for the drop in ratings (which cannot be hidden by any “victories” in fraudulent elections), the obvious lies with the “pension reform” (all the promises of its allegedly positive results for citizens were violated), the obvious inability to fight the coronavirus epidemic otherwise, as through threats and bans, and a fall in the living standards of those who do not belong to “Putin’s friends”, top officials or “siloviki”.

So there are shouts from Moscow that Ukraine, as they say, “took half of its army to Donbass” – should convince an ordinary Russian citizen in the street that it is not the Russian authorities who are plotting a new attack on Ukraine, pulling the army to its borders, but vice versa.

When the Foreign Ministry’s talking head declares that “the Russian armed forces on Russian territory are the legitimate right of a sovereign state,” a natural question arises: why are you so indignant if the Ukrainian armed forces are stationed on Ukrainian territory?

Yet the threat of a new war with Ukraine has not become a reality.

But if it does, it is easy to predict how the Duma parties, which unconditionally support Putin’s foreign policy, will react to it.

[All the parliamentary parties] United Russia, Zyuganov’s [communist party], that the Prilepin’s and Mironov’s [A Just Russia for Truth party], that the Zhirinovsky’s [LDPR party] are one and the same party of war.

There was only one party of peace in all the past elections, which opposed the war and warned of its danger: Yabloko.

Which demanded in its election programme to recognise in full the sovereignty of Ukraine and stop the intervention in Donbass.

But many “thought leaders” (including those from the beautiful far away) did not pay the slightest attention to this, calling to “Smart Voting” supporting the communists or a Just Russia. And not to vote for Yabloko, which supposedly “would not pass”.

Well, others have “passed” – those who will now support the war in a single impulse.

They are indistinguishable in this respect (as well as in others – say, in the question of “foreign agents”) from the [ruling] United Russia [party] to the point of confusion.

Don’t say now that you weren’t warned.

Source at the Ekho Moskvi web-site

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and  Bureau. Leader of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg