AS TENSIONS rise in the build-up to Sunday’s presidential election in Russia, the organisers of opposition protests have been accused of making false videos of voting irregularities in advance of the vote and have been compared to the Orange revolutionaries who overturned Ukraine’s presidential election eight years ago.
Vladimir Markin of Russia’s state investigation commission (SK) has said there is evidence that false videos of ballot stuffing in Sunday’s elections have already been made with the bogus recording date of March 4th.
In a country where one side does not believe the other and conspiracy theories abound, the announcement has been greeted with suspicion. Opposition members regard the investigation as a move to discredit genuine videos of electoral irregularities.
On Wednesday, prime minister Vladimir Putin, who is expected to win the presidential election comfortably, raised the issue at a meeting of the All-Russian People’s Front, a think tank allied to his political party United Russia.
The head of the country’s Central Election Commission, Vladimir Churov, has also spoken of false videos of election fraud being produced. Mr Churov has been described by opponents as the author of “Churov’s Law”, which reads simply: “Putin is always right”.
Mr Putin’s bizarre and sinister statement that opponents may “sacrifice” a well-known person to blame the killing on the authorities and consequently on himself has provoked fear in opposition circles.
Mikhail Prokhorov, the billionaire oligarch who is running as an independent candidate, on Sunday accused Mr Putin of increasing tensions by his statement and said: “The authorities should remember that it is they, and not the opposition, who are responsible for the protection of the country’s citizens.”
Moscow’s mayor, Sergei Sobyanin, has said he will not allow a “Maidan” in Moscow, a reference to Kiev’s main square, the Maidan Nezalezhnosti which was the centre of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which overturned presidential election results there in the winter of 2004-2005.
It has been the practice of supporters of Mr Putin to make direct and continuous comparisons between those who have taken to the streets of Moscow since the disputed parliamentary elections in December, and those who overturned Ukraine’s presidential elections in 2004.
Mr Sobyanin said he would allow rallies from all sides on March 5th, the day after the election, but would confiscate tents or other equipment that might allow demonstrators to remain overnight at demonstration sites. It has not been the practice of demonstrators to do this. It seemed clear, therefore, that the announcement was simply an attempt to compare Moscow’s opposition demonstrators with those in Ukraine.
The term “Orangeists” has been used consistently by the authorities when referring to the demonstrators, despite the fact that they have chosen white ribbons as their identifying colour. The rationale behind this is to suggest that the Russian demonstrators are being used by the United States to overturn the electoral process in Russia.
But unlike the Ukrainians who gathered in Kiev, the Russian demonstrators have been careful to go through the procedure of negotiating with Mr Sobyanin’s office the timing and venues of all the major demonstrations that have been taking place in the Russian capital over the past two months. Negotiations are under way between the organisers of street-based opposition and Moscow City Council for mass rallies on Monday and on March 8th, International Women’s Day, which is a public holiday in Russia.
In a separate development, Russia’s prosecutor general’s office has requested Ukraine to extradite Adam Osmayev, one of the two men arrested in Odessa on charges of planning to assassinate Mr Putin by planting an anti-tank mine on Moscow’s Kutuzovsky Prospekt.