Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 1 – Because far
more Russians declared on YouTube that they disliked Vladimir Putin’s New Year’s
message than said they liked what he had said and because many went further and
posted negative commentaries, state-controlled television chose to hide these
figures and comments on its broadcasts about the speech (ehorussia.com/new/node/20028).
This is a growing problem for the
Kremlin: Earlier in December, Russians recorded 51,000 dislikes of Putin’s
press conference as carried on YouTube while only 15,000 said they “liked”
it. A year ago at the time of his 2019
New Year’s message, the number of Russians who disliked his remarks exceeded
the number who liked them. But state TV reported on this.
While those who use YouTube are a
special subset of the Russian population, one likely to be more critical of
Putin than others, this change in government policy suggests that this “poll”
on the president is becoming more negative and that the Kremlin is becoming
ever more sensitive about calling any attention to it.
The YouTube like-dislike balance was
not the only indication of Russians’ increasing displeasure with Putin.
Villagers in Siberia asked that the president not make any such statement at
all (sibreal.org/a/30351214.html),
and other Russians went online to make fun of his promises (rusmonitor.com/v-seti-smeyutsya-nad-obeshhaniyami-putina-platit-rossiyanam-zarplatu-v-2700-k-2020-godu.html).
But perhaps the clearest measure of
how many Russians feel about Putin came in response to the appearance of a
Putin double on the independent TV network Dozhd. He declared that “I am
tired and I am leaving,” the very words that Yeltsin used 20 years ago and that
many Russians would like to hear Putin speak now (censoru.net/2020/01/01/-novogodnee-pozdravlenie-dvojnika-putina-v-rossii-porvalo-internet-jeto-video-bet-rekordy-v-trendah.html).
The program went viral on the
Russian Internet.
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