Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 7 – To undercut
protests against sending trash to the north and to ensure Vladimir Putin’s
friends profit from such a move, the administration of Arkhangelsk Oblast has
begun to assemble a pool of residents from Shiyes who are prepared to telephone
the Kremlin leader during his June 20 Direct Line program and say they back
setting up the dumps.
That development, almost certainly
undertaken at the suggestion of the Presidential Administration, was reported
yesterday on Ekho Moskvy by Valery Solovey, an MGIMO political scientist
and frequent commentator on the Moscow scene (znak.com/2019-06-07/politolog_solovey_rasskazal_o_podgotovke_loyalnyh_zhiteley_shiesa_k_pryamoy_linii_s_putinym
and https://echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/2440619-echo/).
Solovey said that the members of
this group are prepared to say “’Vladimir Vladimirovich, we like everything. We
have agreed to everything. Send the trash. We like it when our land is
contaminated and our ground water too, and when our children get sick with
cancer. We like it; we’ve agreed about everything with the administration.”
These people will have been paid off
one way or another or they will expect preferment if they say what those above
them want. And Putin will then be told that their voices are more important
than those of the protesters and that everything has been fortunately resolved
in his favor.
The Kremlin leader “will look, shrug
his shoulders and say: ‘In fact. They’re good guys and they’ve sat at the negotiating
table.’” Solovey added that ,in his
view, “unfortunately, this is how Russian policy is made. This is the virtual
reality which is being created around the head of our state.”
The MGIMO scholar expressed the hope
that now that he has exposed this plot, perhaps its authors in Moscow and
Arkhangelsk will back off their latest plans to create the appearance of “a
fake consensus.”
No comments:
Post a Comment