Putin will win, despite many disasters

RUSSIA: While Vladimir Putin is assured of re-election tomorrow, not everyone deems his first term a success, reports Daniel McLaughlinin Moscow

Katya Malukova didn't believe lightning would strike twice.

"After the first explosion, I wasn't hurt but was so shocked I didn't leave the house for a week," she said.

The first blast, last September 3rd, killed six passengers on the train Katya took every day with dozens of fellow students in southern Russia. She was two carriages away from the explosion. Three months later, she was less fortunate.

"It was the same train. I saw nothing suspicious and was reading a book when a friend got on, and we chatted. I don't remember what happened next," Katya said.

"I came round and didn't know what was going on. Then I started to scream, because the pain started and I knew I was bleeding. They lifted me out of the mangled carriage and took me to hospital." The second bomb killed 42 people. She suffered severe concussion, and both her eardrums were badly damaged.

"Surely the President should take responsibility for things like that - he is the most important man in the country. He has responsibility for providing security for people, so they can feel protected. Surely he could do something."

Russians will vote for a new president tomorrow, but the old one is bound to win. Opinion polls show that about 80 per cent of Russians approve of Mr Vladimir Putin and that no one can stop him winning another four-year term in the Kremlin. Not that the former KGB spy's first stint was trouble-free.

In August 2000, he oversaw the botched attempts to save the crew of the Kursk nuclear submarine ripped open by a faulty torpedo. All 118 men on board died.

He has failed to deliver on an election pledge to end the war with Chechen separatists, and Moscow's men still die every day in rebel attacks.

The Kremlin also blames the guerrillas for bombs that have killed hundreds of people close to Chechnya and in Moscow, and most recently for a blast that killed 40 commuters on the capital's metro last month.

Outside a Moscow court this week, relatives of Ms Natalya Kiselyova explained why they were suing the Moscow city authorities over her death in the metro bombing.

"It's not about money," said Ms Kiselyova's brother, Alexei. "We just want to see the government react to what happened. Everything's simply gone quiet."

Mr Dmitry Milovidov won't let silence fall over his daughter's death. Nina Milovidova (14) was one of 130 people who died in Moscow's Dubrovka theatre when special forces pumped gas into the building and stormed it, ending a siege by heavily armed Chechen rebels.

Dozens died of asphyxiation outside the theatre as doctors struggled to deal with the effects of the mystery gas. Officials refused to disclose its chemical make-up, calling it a state secret.

Later, Mr Putin said the gas was harmless, and did not directly kill the victims. Now Mr Milovidov is suing the President for that comment, saying it contradicted an admission from the health minister that a powerful narcotic gas was used.

"One of them is lying," he told The Irish Times. "I think the President is lying." But Mr Milovidov is not surprised that voters will not make Mr Putin pay tomorrow for the death and destruction wreaked under his watch.

National television is state-controlled and casts Mr Putin in an almost exclusively positive light.

And Russians are benefiting from a growing economy: wages and pensions are increasing and are paid promptly. Mr Putin conveys an air of quiet optimism and assurance that was anathema to his predecessor - the ailing, and vodka-loving Mr Boris Yeltsin - in his final, chaotic years in power.

"Putin's popularity has much to do with the Russian attitude towards one big man at the top, trusted and admired, who is immune to and untouched by bad things in the country," said Ms Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Centre in Moscow. "It goes back not just to the Soviet days but much further.It's not that everyone thinks everything is okay - how could they after things like the metro explosion?" she said. "But they don't want to see Putin as the man to blame."