Systemic Opposition Parties Irrelevant in Russia Today, Rodin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 8 – The so-called systemic opposition parties in the Russian Federation have become irrelevant in the current political system, Ivan Rodin says, with their leaders failing to provide any alternative visions for the future and increasingly inclined to talk about the past when they expected a different outcome.

            The politics editor of Nezavisimaya gazeta says that the KPRF, the LDPR, Just Russia-For Truth, and New People claim to be opposition parties but in almost all cases support the government’s policies. And even when they do oppose them, they have no success in changing outcomes (ng.ru/politics/2023-01-08/1_8628_opposition.html).

            Many of the leaders of these parties appear to recognize this fact, Rodin continues; but they don’t appear all that interested in doing anything about it, preferring instead to talk about the past when they hoped to matter more or to blaming the population for failing to respond to them.

            Until they change course, the Nezavisimaya gazeta politics editor suggests, they are likely to remain as irrelevant to Russia’s future as an appendage like the appendix is to the human body, useful only for the regime to suggest propagandistically that under Putin, Russia is a democracy with real opposition parties.