Russian Officials Now Blaming ‘Outside Agitators’ for Protests in Regions

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – The contempt of Russian officials for ordinary Russians and their ability to protest against  what is being done to them is so great that it was inevitable that, as those demonstrations have gained momentum, some of them would fall back on the favored explanation of entrenched elites everywhere: outside agitators are to blame.

            Aleksandr Yakushev, a senior MVD official in Arkhangelsk, is typical. He says that “a large segment of the activists protesting against construction [of the dump for Moscow trash there] are people who have come in from other regions, predominantly Moscow and St. Petersburg” (iarex.ru/articles/66864.html).

            In reporting this, the pro-Kremlin Rex news agency argues that there is a very clear line between concerned local residents and agitators who come in from the outside who “protest for protest’s sake and for whom issues of ‘for what, against what, and why are already secondary issues.”

            The agency suggests that the outside agitators have arrived to stir up trouble even before the trash began to come in and therefore have decided to create a problem where none yet exists. It cites two telegram channels to the effect that in Shiyes and in Yekaterinburg, at least some of the outsider came from Ukraine  (t.me/sueverdem/976 and t.me/obrazbuduschego/6177).

            Blaming outside agitators is likely to become a major theme as the Putin regime responds to protests especially because this unfortunate natural tendency by local officials to say that everything is fine if outsiders from the capitals would just say away can easily combine with Moscow’s desire to blame any domestic problems on outsiders even farther away.