Saturday, October 19, 2019

Kremlin Mulls Creation of a Green Party to Capture Environmentalists and Defeat the KPRF


Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 16 – Various Moscow media outlets are reporting that the Presidential Administration is considering setting up a pocket Green Party in order to capture the growing environmentalist movement and prevent it or the KPRF from exploiting this issue against the powers that be (rbc.ru/politics/16/10/2019/5da5fa5d9a7947d24163299c?from=from_main%20).

            There is already a small Green Party in Russia headed by Oleg Mitvol, who earlier served in the Putin regime as head of the government’s environmental protection agency, but as he and others admit, it has little power and few prospects to emerge as a challenger in the upcoming Duma elections.

            He tells Novyye izvestiya that the Kremlin and United Russia have not been able to cope with environmental issues.  As a result, spreading environmental activism is taking on a political dimension.  Creating a Kremlin-controlled Green organization could help limit that (newizv.ru/article/general/16-10-2019/oleg-mitvol-partiya-vlasti-ne-spravlyaetsya-s-ekologicheskoy-povestkoy).

            And while it is a good thing that the Presidential Administration is focusing on environmental concerns, Mitvol says, it is far from clear whether it could organize such a party effectively given that the Putin regime continues to insist that there are environmental problems throughout the world but not in Russia.

            Changing its own message would work better for the Kremlin than creating yet another party.

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