By Backing Kocharyan, Putin on the Way to Losing Armenia, Melnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – By his support for discredited Armenian leader Robert Kocharyan, most recently in his birthday greetings to the former president yesterday (kremlin.ru/events/president/news/58419), Vladimir Putin is on his way to doing something no Russian leader has ever done before: losing Armenia as an ally, Aleksey Melnikov says.

            Putin and his regime “will support Kocharyan” because he is the embodiment of “the corrupt system which the Armenian people has risen against” but which is “the friend and ally of the Russian corrupt system,” the Russian commentator says. The peoples in neither country are the allies of such rulers (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5B895FBE7164C).

                The Kremlin leader has smiled at Nikol Pashinyan, the new head of Armenia, but Putin isn’t willing to make peace with him and come to terms with the revolution the latter is leading.  Instead, as before, Putin “will support Kocharyan,” something the Armenian people “naturally will not accept.”

            “As a result,” Melnikov continues, “the Russian border guards with time will leaveand the Russian base [in Armenia] will be removed, and everything will end with alienation, not with the people of Russia but with the powers that be of our country.” 

            Like the Bourbons, Putin has learned nothing and forgotten nothing. He has alienated Georgia and Ukraine but not taken to heart what his actions in those countries have produced. Now, he is doing the same thing in Armenia, and he will get the same result, the Russian commentator says. Yet another “failure.”

Crowd-Funding Takes Away a Kremlin Weapon – Death by Fines

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – The Putin regime may have lost one of its favorite ways of closing down media outlets it doesn’t like – the imposition of fines that these outlets haven’t been able to pay and that Western observers often dismiss as something other than the repressive measures they are.

            Last week, a Russian court imposed an 800,000-ruble (11,000 US dollars) fine on the 7x7 news agency, an independent online resource that covers developments in Russia’s regions and republics that Moscow would prefer to remain uncovered. That fine, the Kremlin clearly calculated would be sufficient to close the outlet.

            But the powers that be were wrong. 7x7 journalists launched an online crowd-funding ever and with 24 hours had collected more than 840,000 rubles from its supporters.  That is more than enough to pay the fine and ensure that the agency can continue to function, at least until the regime comes up with another tactic (kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/324843/).

Russians Get Serious -- Old Outrageous Distractions No Longer Work, Gudkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 1 – The Poles have a saying, frequently heard at the end of the Soviet occupation, that when times are bad, people tell political jokes; but when times get worse, they stop.  Something analogous appears to be happening in Russia today – and the new seriousness among Russians may portend a serious new situation for the Kremlin.

            For most of the last three decades, a small number of Russian politicians – Vladimir Zhirinovsky is only the most famous – have by their very outrageousness often served to distract the Russian people from the difficulties they themselves face and the crimes their leaders have committed.

            In the last few years, one of the most active of these public “clowns” has been Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov who could be counted on to enliven the public space even at the most awful times with his outrageous proposals. But this week, his ability to do so appears to have worn out, Dmitry Gudkov says (rosbalt.ru/posts/2018/08/31/1728929.html).

            This week, the opposition politician says, Milonov tried to lighten the atmosphere with three of his trademark ideas – a call for closing all adult stores, a plan to frighten Russians who eat Western fast food with pictures of headless bodies, and the suggestion that soldiers be fed shaurma. “But in response was a deafening silence.”

            “The times have changed.” Russians are no longer going to be distracted by such notions. “Reality has overtaken the wildest fantasies because when they (again) put people in prison for anecdotes and pictures,” nothing Milonov “with his stupidities” can do will change the public mood.

            “The jokes are over,” Gudkov says. “The time of bestial seriousness has arrived: even Putin condescended to speak with the people on television. A clear understanding is hanging in the air: this is no time to be smiling!  We have crossed an important line,” and now people are taking things far more seriously than they did.

                Two wars, attacks on people at home and now the destruction of people’s expectations about pensions have made Russians aware that under Putin, they live a life of “total theft, arrests-arrests-arrests, and tortures-tortures-tortures.”  That is no laughing matter, however much clowns like Milonov try to make it into one. 

            “Clowns have always understood that they are clowns,” and they generally know when to exit the stage.  The last year has created that condition, Gudkov says.  “A critical mass of bestiality has taken shape in which it is difficult to breathe and in which one doesn’t feel like laughing.”

            There was a breather during the World Cup when some “fresh air” came in from abroad, but now things are depressed again. No one is laughing at the Milonovs of Moscow any more. Instead, they are silently waiting for “the funeral bell” to sound, signaling the end of the era in which they have been living.