Standing Up to Putin
Roman Dobrokhotov is just the latest in a line of young heroes who have stood against the neo-Sovietization of Russia.
Last week a young man stood up in a crowd during a speech by Russian “President” Dmitri Medvedev and shouted: “Why are you listening to him? He’s violated the rights and freedoms of people and citizens!” Reuters and the Associated Press both picked up the story of how the brave young man brought Medvedev’s speech to a standstill before being whisked away by the Kremlin’s security thugs. YouTube has the video.
This was Roman Dobrokhotov, the rakishly handsome journalist, blogger, Moscow State Institute of International Relations student, and leader of the “We” movement. He was written up by the Other Russia opposition movement this past October after he blogged about being “approached and offered money in exchange for damaging information against well known public figures.” He posted transcripts and recordings (Russian link) of the conversations. Dobrokhotov was also a prominent member of the brief presidential campaign of Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky. In 2005, Dobrokhotov formed a group called “Walking without Putin“ as a counterpoint to a group of Putin sycophants with a similar name.
By telephone from the police station after his arrest, Dobrokhotov stated: “When Medvedev started to speak about how great our constitution was I couldn’t take it any longer. He is talking complete rubbish.”
Opposition to the Putin regime begins to seem increasingly credible. The plunging ruble, FOREX reserves, and stock market washed away Putin’s patina of invincibility. Last week my blog La Russophobe ran down a litany of setbacks the Kremlin has faced in recent days in its march towards the total elimination of dissent, and now Garry Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov have created a “Solidarity” movement and openly proclaimed they intend to “dismantle Putin.” It can’t have escaped their notice that the Kremlin recently moved to abolish jury trials for those accused of sedition. Neither Kasparov nor Nemtsov have shown the inclination, much less the ability, to directly challenge Putin in any practical way, but the bluntness of their rhetoric shows they sense Putin’s vulnerability.
The Kremlin is unlikely to take this confrontation lying down. How long before Mr. Dobrokhotov is found eligible for military service and spirited off in the night to unknown locations, as was fellow GenX opposition leader Oleg Kozlovsky, about whom I’ve previously written for Pajamas Media? Will he be as lucky as that? Many other Russian journalists have not been. How long before he, or even Kasparov or Nemtsov for that matter, meet with foul play in the entryway of their apartment buildings?
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Kim Zigfeld is a New York City-based writer who publishes her own Russia specialty blog, La Russophobe. She also writes about Russia for the American Thinker and for Russia! magazine and is researching a book on the rise of dictatorship in Putin’s Russia.
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23 Comments
1. An Israeli supporter:Kim, you are doing a wonderful job.
But the West you are counting on is controlled by a bunch of defeatist leftists, who secretly (or not-so-secretly) adore and agree with Putinism tactics and strategy. As long as it stays confined (broadly) to Great Mother Russia borders – which may, as history proves, include Poland and Czechoslovakia – Putin, Medvedev and Co. can continue to prey on its helpless population. They still continue to buy our Coca-Cola and BMWs, and the West can still continue to sell it to them, don’t they?
As Ilf and Petrov famously put it: “the rescue of those who are drowning is their own business”. Kasparov, Nemzov, Milov, Kozlovsky and Dobrohotov must struggle alone. The West opens it’s Second Front only when Europe maps are generally of the same color (brown or red).
Dec 19, 2008 - 2:52 am 2. seven:Noise and fear. As the Russian market craters, we see the country is overly dependent on minerals and energy in its exports. Iran has less money by a lot to buy weapons and this is very sudden. In the Reagan era, Russia was running nearly insolvent. Now they are again.
Dec 19, 2008 - 6:10 am 3. deguello:The big whammy is their massive drop in prices and a decrease in oil reserves. The day they take over a huge oil company, you can expect exploration to be suddenly less successful and they are not finding oil nearly as fast as they produce it. Production is falling rapidly and prices have already fallen.
Our bailouts including guarantees are greater in dollars than their GDP. It is hard to find but many days since spring they suspended trading on their stock eschange because of excessive drops. As the nationalize companies, their opportunity for credit is dry as a bone.
Our GDP drops between 0 and 3% while their GDP drops 30%.
What! I can’t wait for the pacifist appeasing demagoge Messiah to encounter Putin.Talk a lamb going to the slaughter!
Dec 19, 2008 - 6:55 am 4. Ben Franklin:We no longer have any moral authority to criticize Russia. We are nationalizing our own industries and are seriously considering implementing our own “Fairness Doctrine.” We already have McCain-Feingold and we almost elected one of its architects as our president. The guy we actually elected pals around with people who attempted to do exactly what Osama Bin Laden did so we have nothing to say about terrorism either for that matter.
We need to get our own house in order and leave the Russians to their love affair with oppression. There are few enough freedom loving people in the US now that all of our efforts will have to be expended at home fighting against the tyrants on our own shores. The rest of the world will have to fend for itself and find a new symbol of liberty to look to for an example.
Dec 19, 2008 - 7:50 am 5. colleen:Imagine if Russian pundits were like:
“We ought to support Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich and Cindy Sheehan any other hack in America that has totally no experience and will definitely ruin that country… and, why not, let’s do this on the premise that American two-party democracy is a fraud, its invasion of Iraq illegitimate, and its Patriot Act inhumane.”
Seriously, Kim, your game is up, you make no sense, and you are loooooooosing.
Dec 19, 2008 - 3:54 pm 6. kabud:putin is nobody he knows nothing as a front man he is not entitled to know
dont be fooled:
kremlin is ruled by collective leadership of high rankling kgb and military people and those who posses secret kgb files on one-another
Dobrokhotov is a very brave man anyway and shpuld be supported as much as we can
nemtsov and company are just their in case kremlin decides to go for another false liberalization show
but most likely it is going to be a war, something like a terror attack on us here with bacteriological weapon that non-existing al queda or some other kremlin stocking horse will sign its name to
kremlin has no other way: their economy is going to disintegrate next year and looks like it will never can be repaired unless the political system will change
Dec 19, 2008 - 4:18 pm 7. Mongo:I think we should be worried about what’s going on in the US, Iraq and Afghanistan rather than about some kid shouting at the Russian president. When we’re going to be at least $1 trillion dollars in debt next year we need to pick our fights very carefully.
Dec 19, 2008 - 9:11 pm 8. Steve J. Nelson:Kim Zigfeld is a sock puppet blogging collective for some PR firm, maybe Randy Scheunemann’s Orion Strategies Group, that is out to push the New Cold War agenda hard, and grab as many U.S. taxpayer dollars for scoundrels like Saakashvili and Yuschenko as possible. The fact that the Pajamas Media editors continue to publish his or her anonymous hateful rants is an embarassment. They ought to require real people to use their real names, unless they’re blogging from inside Iran or China or will seriously get fired for what they write.
Presumably, Kim Zigfeld and John Birch Society Blues poster child Kabud will now call me a KGB agent for objecting to sending even more taxpayer dollars to these “freedom fighters”.
Dec 19, 2008 - 11:22 pm 9. kabud:Mongo: you think, of course, i know. But this is what they are doing tomorow, or already started because of the time difference
——————-
Final “Bulava” test launch
2008-12-16
Submissile launch
Submissile launch
Russia plans another test launch of a “Bulava” missile December 21. If the test is successful, the Russian Navy will put the missile into service.
The newest Russian sea-based intercontinental ballistic missile “Bulava” will be launched from a Northern Fleet nuclear submarine December 21, a source in the military-industrial complex told news agency Interfax.
- This will be the final test launch. If the test is successful, the missile will be put into service by the Russian Navy, and serial production will start, the source said.
The Russian Navy has previously launched nine Bulava missiles. Four of those ended with failure. The first completely successful test launch of the missile was conducted in November.
The Bulava carries the NATO reporting name SS-NX-30. It is based on the SS-27 (Topol M), but is both lighter and more sophisticated.
The first submarine to be equipped with Bulava missiles, is Borey-class nuclear-powered sub “Yury Dolgoruky”, which is currently undergoing sea trials. It will be equipped with 16 Bulava ballistic missiles, each carrying up to 10 nuclear warheads and having a range of 8,000 kilometers. Two other Borey-class nuclear submarines, the “Alexander Nevsky” and the “Vladimir Monomakh”, are currently under construction at the Sevmash plant in Arkhangelsk.
Read also:
Russia testfired “Bulava” missile
Russia starts serial production of “Bulava” missiles
Dec 20, 2008 - 8:37 pm 10. Mongo:I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. If you’re trying to say the Bulava missile tests means Russia is preparing for war then your deluded. The Bulava has been in development for a long time now.
Dec 21, 2008 - 7:10 pm 11. kabud:Mongo:
ACBM with multiple warheads not for war of course
well, it may cost billions each when country is in 6 month from bancrupcy
not for war!
USA probably tested any missile like 30 years ago
and is not developing ANY
learning disability is curable but what you will get from radiation fallout and anthrax- is NOT
Dec 22, 2008 - 7:57 pm 12. Mongo:I’m going to have to disagree with you the Bulava tests mean Russia is preparing for war and leave it there since we’re no longer talking about anything in the article above.
I’ll end my discussion on the article by saying yelling at the Russian president doesn’t make you a hero and I predict nothing bad is going to happen to the man in question. I’m also going to predict that Russia is not going to collapse in 2009 or any year after that and the Putin/Medvedev government will still be in power for the foreseeable future. For my last prediction, I will say Russia,compared to the US, will be in a much better position once the global economy begins to recover since it is not going to rack up a debt substantially bigger than its entire GDP and will not be trapped in a debt-spiral where it will have to continually take on new debt to pay off the interest on the old debt.
And with that my time here is at an end.
Dec 22, 2008 - 10:26 pm 13. Russian Bear:….how long before our so-called “leaders” in the West begin to speak out on behalf of real Russian heroes like Dobrokhotov and Kozlovsky, who remain largely unknown and unrecognized in the West?Come on Kim! They are largely unknown because they are not heroes. For Dobrokhotov to interrupt Medvedev’s speech was not a heroic act. He was just taken out off the room, shortly detained at the local polce department, and let free. Russia is not a dictatorship. People have freedom of speech there. You can see Dobrokhotov directing his small liberal youth band called “WE” on a street of Moscow freely chanting anti-government slogans here. The slogans are sarcastic, like “All power to the KGB!” “Build more prisons!”, “Putin is a saint!” and so on… The cops are just watching, letting the Dobrokhotov’s guys have fun, and an old lady only seems to be unhappy, trying to talk to the protesters.I can not understand why President Obama is supposed to talk to this eccentric showing off young man? Don’t you have street protesters in the USA? Or young people who may interrupt a government official’s speech? If you do not, than, OK, Mr. Obama can start his presidency with a call to Roman Dobrokhotov. Though, I do not think this is the President’s business. And if yet it comes to real heroes, I would recommend Mr. Obama to callthis guy. who is in prison now waiting to be sentenced for up to 7 years.
Dec 23, 2008 - 9:10 pm 14. Russian Bear:Correction: I gave the wrong link after the words Mr. Obama to call in my posting above. The right one is <A HREF=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjnMsiKuGXM&NR=1″<this guy
Dec 23, 2008 - 9:19 pm 15. Russian Bear:Correction: I gave the wrong link after the words Mr. Obama to call in my posting above. The right one is
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjnMsiKuGXM&NR=1
Dec 23, 2008 - 9:22 pm 16. john galt lives:IF i remember my history correctly,Stalin refused to withdraw russian troops from Eastern Europe because FDR refused to stand up to him at Yalta. Then in 1949 the Russians put the blockade on West Berlin. In 1950, Communist North Korea attacked across the 38th parellel into South Korea. When our side began to win RED CHINA interferred on the side of the aggressors. In the 1960s, North Vietnam invaded there non-communist neighbors in South Vietnam and eventually Laos and Cambodia. Now today the far left sides with ISLAMIC SUPREMACISTS against FREEDOM of any kind. What makes this even dumber is the fact that ISLAM mostly complains about what the LEFT is responsible for. The far left is the problem, spurred mostly by far left control of LAW, ACADEMIA, MEDIA AND POLITICS.
Dec 24, 2008 - 11:43 am 17. Steve J. Nelson:Nice to see sanity and reality prevailing over new John Birch Society member kabud who thinks the Commies are still at it in the Kremlin.
And of course, over at her blog, Kim Zigfeld tries to call me a redneck moron for being sympathetic to Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), as if that can describe the hundreds of thousands who gave him money or volunteered for his fledgling campaign. I put Kim on notice that she can censor me on her blog, but she can’t do it over here at Pajamas Media. You’ll notice too, that Kim has never taken the bait, not once, to try to hold up her arguments after I’ve shown how crazy and false they are.
No, she ignores me, because she never wants to discuss who funds her or for what purpose, or whether he/she/they has ever actually been to Russia or studied the country at all. That would spoil the cartoon character Google-bombing schtick. As it is though, Zigfeld’s traffic is just a tiny fraction of humor sites like English Russia or the other blogs she regularly attacks, such as Russia Blog or Sean’s Russia Blog.
Dec 24, 2008 - 12:32 pm 18. Bob:The commies are not still at it in the Kremlin?
That’s right folks, move along, nothing to see here…
Sounds like Steve (#17) may be practicing Saul Alinksy’s rule #5 in Rules for radicals:
Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
Don’t let this tactic put you off like so many who are afraid to use the “c” word because they were mocked by teachers, the media and now also bloggers. There have been, and will continue to be, people who seek to force their ideology upon others. They may change the name from time to time, but the effect is still the same – and Putin has all the earmarks of a tyrant.
Enemies disappear into the political machine, opponents die untimely deaths, youth movements that brainwash… just read the news coming out of Russia. Is it all made up? Is Russia some thriving bastion of individual freedom?
Oh, I forget, the commies are gone and freedom is in the air.
Put down the bong.
Dec 24, 2008 - 7:41 pm 19. kabud:Report: Russian military gets new nuclear missiles
Wed Dec 24, 2:09 pm ET
MOSCOW – Russian news reports say the military has commissioned another batch of new intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Russian news agencies quote a statement from the Strategic Missile Forces as saying the Topol-M missiles were put on duty Wednesday in Teikovo. The news agencies say the missiles are mounted on heavy off-road vehicles, but do not say how many were deployed.
Teikovo is a small town in the Ivanovo region some 250 kilometers (about 150 miles) northeast of Moscow.
The military commissioned its first Topol-Ms in 1998. The ITAR-Tass news agency said Wednesday the Strategic Missile Forces will have 65 such missiles by the year’s end.
Russian officials hail the Topol-M’s ability to penetrate any prospective missile defense.
Dec 25, 2008 - 11:26 am 20. kabud:MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia reserves the right to use force again to defend its interests and will not tolerate attempts by Western powers to contain it, President Dmitry Medvedev said in an interview broadcast on Wednesday.
In an end-of-year interview that signaled an uncompromising stance toward U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s incoming administration, Medvedev said Russia’s war with Georgia in August showed that tough action was sometimes unavoidable.
“Russia’s interests must be secured by all means available, this is my deep conviction. First of all, by international and legal tools … but, when necessary, by using an element of force,” Medvedev said in the interview, which was shown on Russia’s main television stations.
Touching on an economic slowdown that represents the biggest challenge to the Kremlin’s grip on power in a decade, Medvedev said Russia would weather the crisis but the rouble exchange rate would become more flexible.
That appeared to be an acknowledgement that Russia cannot sustain the billions of dollars it has been spending to support a currency that has come under immense downward pressure as prices for oil, Russia’s main export, plummet.
Medvedev ordered a massive counter-attack in August after forces under Georgia’s pro-Western President Mikheil Saakashvili tried to retake South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia.
The Russian leader said he was compelled to act to prevent a genocide but Western states said the Russian action — which included sending troops to within a few kilometers (miles) of the Georgian capital — was disproportionate.
Medvedev alarmed some in the West by announcing the deployment of missiles to the western outpost of Kaliningrad in retaliation for U.S. plans, bitterly opposed in Moscow, to build a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.
In the interview, a transcript of which was posted on Medvedev’s official Internet site, http://www.kremlin.ru, he also attacked long-term plans by the NATO alliance to expand eastwards by allowing ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia to join.
“Today I do indeed feel an attempt to ‘put Russia in its place’. And if, sometime ago, when Russia was in a quite different situation, such attempts could still yield some results, in today’s situation …. this is simply inadmissible.”
SANCTIONS THREAT
He threatened Ukraine with sanctions if it failed to pay some $2 billion Moscow says it owes for gas. Russia has said it may cut off supplies to its neighbor from January 1, potentially disrupting gas deliveries via Ukraine to European states.
“They should pay the money to the last rouble if they do not want their economy ultimately to face sanctions by Russia,” Medvedev said.
Russia has been one of the biggest casualties of the global financial crisis, with its stock markets losing about 70 percent of their value since peaks in May and factories laying off thousands of workers.
Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev warned on Wednesday that Russia faced unprecedented danger and a senior police official predicted a surge in street protests.
Medvedev said Russia was likely to suffer a rise in unemployment, but he said the crisis — blamed in the Kremlin on lax regulation on Wall Street — was of manageable proportions.
“I believe the situation is not the most simple one, but there is no excuse for absolutely dramatic conclusions, to say nothing of hysteria. There is no ground to suppose we will have to resort to any radical measures,” he said.
Dec 25, 2008 - 11:27 am 21. kabud:MOSCOW – Russia’s space agency says it has successfully launched three satellites to enhance its equivalent of the U.S. Global Positioning System.
The space agency says three GLONASS-M satellites have been put into orbit by a Proton-M rocket that blasted off from the Baikonur launch pad in Kazakhstan.
The agency said the satellites launched Thursday will join Russia’s Global Navigation Satellite System, or GLONASS.
The system had 17 satellites before Thursday’s launch. It’s supposed to have 24 satellites available worldwide.
The government had promised to make GLONASS fully operationa
Dec 25, 2008 - 11:27 am 22. kabud:Russia selling surface-to-air missiles to Libya, Syria: report
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2 hrs 14 mins ago
MOSCOW (AFP) – Russia has begun to fulfil a 250-million-dollar contract to deliver surface-to-air missiles to seven countries including Libya, Syria and Venezuela, the Vedomosti business daily reported Friday.
Russia will also deliver the S-125 Pechora-2M missile batteries to Egypt, Myanmar, Vietnam and Turkmenistan under the contract, the newspaper said, citing a source in the state-owned Russian Technologies corporation.
Contacted by AFP, a spokeswoman for the company declined to comment. Russian Technologies includes arms exporter Rosoboronexport among its holdings. The paper did not say which parties had signed the contract.
The Pechora-2M — known as the SA-3A Goa in NATO parlance — is an upgraded version of a surface-to-air missile originally developed in the 1960s that was widely shared with the Soviet Union’s allies around the world.
Under the contract, 200 missiles are to be delivered including 70 for Egypt, an unnamed manager at a Russian defence-industry factory told Vedomosti. He added that most would be built at the Obukhov factory in Saint Petersburg.
“It is a simple but effective system, like the Kalashnikov assault rifle,” he said of the Pechora.
Dec 26, 2008 - 6:10 am 23. Steve J. Nelson:Bob, yes, move along, nothing to see here, you defend Kim Zigfeld. Read my blog about her lies and distortions, then get back to me.
And as for kabud, yes, God forbid our democratic free market allies in Ukraine pay the same amount as Germans for the same Russian gas that is piped across their territory. That would be, y’know, anti-market and “using energy as a political weapon”. And Armenians and Azerbaijanis, who are still supposedly in the Kremlin’s good graces, pay less or more for Russian gas? If you can wrap your mind around that one, I’m all ears.
Dec 29, 2008 - 1:39 pm