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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