Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 1 – A Levada
Center poll shows that 41 percent of Russians now say they should be told the truth about the deaths
of Russian soldiers in southeastern Ukraine, but the Russian government won’t
provide it because to do so would undercut its claim that there are no Russian
forces there at all.
And in support of its effort to
maintain its version of reality, Darya Garmonenko writes in today’s “Nezavisimaya
gazeta,” the Kremlin is deploying the courts against those in Russian society
who have investigated the situation and sought to bring it to the attention of
their fellow citizens (ng.ru/politics/2014-12-01/3_osadok.html).
The Kremlin has brought two charges
against Lyudmila Bogatenkova, the president of the Mothers of Prikumya Human
Rights Organization, the first for fraud and the second for failing to repay a
debt. But both charges, the Moscow journalist says, are connected with her
efforts to find out about Russian combat losses in Ukraine and to communicate
this to others.
The problem is, as Aleksey Makarkin,
the vice president of the Moscow Center for Political Technologies, is that
such charges give the patina of legality to what is a political campaign and
that they will harm Bogatenkova’s reputation and keep her from doing her work
even if as might happen they are shown in court to be without any foundation.
The Levada Center conducted a special
poll about the case. Only 12 percent believed the charges, and an equal share
said that “in reality she is engaged in anti-Russian activities but that the
law enforcement agencies couldn’t charge her with that.” Twenty-two percent
said that they were certain that she was charged with these “crimes” because of
her efforts to learn the truth.
These findings suggest that as
Russian combat losses mount in a war that Vladimir Putin still insists Moscow
is not fighting, ever more Russians do not believe what they are being told by
the official media and are worried about the number of dead and injured from
the conflict in Ukraine.
Among those particularly concerned
are those with sons in the army or those in the army itself. Indeed, one
outspoken anti-war activist, Elena Vasilyeva, says that the increasing number
of combat dead is beginning to affect the Russian army itself, not only
increasing resistance within it to any orders to go there but also leading to
talk about the need to overthrow Putin (nr2.com.ua/News/world_and_russia/Pravozashchitnica-Voennye-gotovy-podnyat-bunt-protiv-Putina-85736.html).
Vasiliyeva, who has been criticized
for what some say is her tendency to overstate Russian losses and Russian
soldiers’ opposition to being sent to Ukraine, likely is overstating the case
with this observation, but she is pointing to a trend, perhaps not as far along
as she suggests, but one that must be worrisome to the Kremlin and the Russian
elites more generally.
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