Sunday, June 9, 2019

Arkhangelsk Officials Form Pro-Trash Dump Group to Call Putin During His Direct Line Program


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.”

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