Zahar Zaripov is appalled: “Why Putin’s confidence is more important than the trust of the people?!” The 36-year-old math teacher is just back from the Demonstration and calm down, hardly: “Our Governor has been dismissed by Putin, because he has allegedly lost the trust. And what is our confidence? We had chosen the Governor, not Putin!”
Together with his wife and five-year-old daughter Zaripov is gone this weekend with tens of thousands in the capital of the province of Khabarovsk to the streets to protest against the arrest of the provincial Governor Sergei Furgal and against the policy of the Kremlin in the Region, in the far East of Russia. It is the largest protests of recent weeks should be on, with claims such as “freedom for Furgal”, “This is our Region” and “Russia, awake”, “away with Putin!”
Controversial arrest of a Governor’s
At 9. July, Sergei Furgal was taken in front of the cameras and in custody, brought to Moscow. The politician is alleged to be 15 years ago in a series of murders involved. He denies all the charges.
Furgals followers to suspect a politically motivated dismissal. In the meanwhile, President Putin dismissed the Governor belongs to the opposition party, the LDPR, the ultra-conservative populist Vladimir Zhirinovsky. He had won two years ago with almost 70 percent of the vote in the gubernatorial election against the candidate of the Kremlin party “United Russia”. For the mathematics teacher Zaripov Furgals deposition is the clear attempt by the Kremlin to muzzle the Opposition.
to be in a Good contact with the voters
Here, Sergei Furgal seems to many people in the Region popular. “He has at least done something for us. In contrast to other politicians,” says Zaripov the Ex-Governor. “Normally, the governors from Moscow to be deployed in the Region. You talk then in the best case, with mayors or deputies, but never with voters. Furgal, however, was different, he has helped us.” The Governor had traveled in two years in office the whole of the far East, and solved many of the problems that have accumulated since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
but It’s mainly the way the authorities have dealt with the elected politicians, the teachers, Zaripov, and thousands of other protesters on the streets. For them, the media is effective to arrest in broad daylight of a pure arbitrariness of Moscow authorities, an obvious insult to the voters, a vilification of the people away from the Russian capital.
Moscow is far away
For the independent political expert Ilya Graschenkow demonstrative arrest is Furgals a step whose consequences for the Kremlin have not calculated. In an interview with DW, he draws attention to the special mentality of the people on the easternmost edge of Russia: “The Anti-Moscow protests against the strong pressure that the Kremlin exerts on the local politicians traditionally. The local elites therefore fear for their existence, and in this case, you want to show solidarity with the common people that feels cheated.”
in addition, Khabarovsk was nine thousand kilometers far away from Moscow: “Hardly anyone from the Region was in Moscow. For many, Moscow is not only geographically, but also mentally further away than the neighbors of China, South Korea or Japan. You will see that it is the immediate neighbors economically better and are more closely related to them than to Moscow.”
the people in Khabarovsk are not on good terms with Moscow and the Kremlin, also has quite pragmatic reasons, explained Zaripov, originally from the small town of Sovetskaya Gavan and rather randomly this weekend in Khabarovsk is: “We hate Moscow. This hatred began with the ban of cars whose steering Wheel is on the right, and we were able to introduce earlier cheap from Japan. Now we have to pay high customs duties. Since this ban on cheap cars from Japan, the popularity decrease of the values of the Central government.”
The resentment grows
How dangerous is this hatred for the Kremlin is? Policy expert Graschenkow refers to a growing mood of Protest in Russia as a whole and is called the manifestations of Khabarovsk “first swallow”: “We see solidarity, scattered in the East, also in other cities. First, with diffuse claims. The Kremlin understands, however, that the declining standard of living can unite the people, and that their anger can be really big.”
Graschenkow power to other protests in Russia – political, economic, ecological: “But the Kremlin underestimated the scope of the protest mood in the simple people, and is afraid of the regional rulers, the split in the Kremlin loyalty and the Kremlin infidelity elites. The unfaithful elites could take advantage of the protest mood in order to organize a coup in the Kremlin.” And that is exactly what Moscow got really scared.
has not Yet mixed so far, the police in the far East. The rallies were peaceful. And, although the Moscow-sent interim Governor pushes more on antipathy in the population. The 39-year-old Mikhail Degtjarjow belongs to the same party as the deposed Furgal, but as a candidate of the Kremlin. His appointment by President Putin was broadcast on state television. He is since the days in Khabarovsk, and avoided but so far the contact with the population. This weekend, he left the city with the words: “I’m free. This time I want to get to know the Region.”
author: mandlmeier
*The post “protests in Khabarovsk: “We hate Moscow!”” published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.
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