‘A Cold Civil War’ Now Taking Place in Russia, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 4 – For the second time in a month, the Kremlin has had to face two actions that suggest a new “cold civil war” has broken out between the rulers and the population in the Russian Federation – the mass signing of Boris Nadezhdin’s presidential petitions and the even larger funeral commemorations for Aleksey Navalny – Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            These actions given Kremlin preferences represent acts of civil disobedience that has not yet turned violent “only because one of the parties is unarmed and the other has shielded itself behind state terrorism,” the London-based Russian analyst says (t.me/v_pastukhov/1002 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/v-rossii-idet-holodnaya-grazhdanskaya-vojna).

            But despite the absence of violence, Pastukhov continues, “it is almost impossible to interpret this as anything but the opening of a front.” And that means that “despite a decade of terror and two years of war, protest [in Russia] has not been stifled and the hydra of revolution is ready to raise its head at the first possibility.”

            At the very least, he concludes, what has occurred is a very “public slap in the face of the Presidential Administration” and it won’t be a surprise “if after the election,” Putin changes the leadership of that institution given that there will be many who will want to blame its staff for not preventing this development.