Originally Posted by
Swan_
The elections were fraudulent, with fabricated results in places like Mordovia and systematic violations such as "carousel voting". Look around the Russian blogosphere and you'll understand the massive dissatisfaction that Russians have for the present regime.
Attempts by Putin and his Nashi idiots to portray him as an anti-oligarchy populist are very cynical. Putin doesn't oppose oligarchy, but is himself a representative of one faction of the oligarchs who are in competition against the likes of Berezovsky and Zhirinovsky. Russia right now has more than 100 billionaires, all of whom are serial thieves who stole all of their wealth from Russian people during the privatisation process of the 1990s.
Russia in the last 20 years has undergone unprecedented devastation. Everything from the military to sports has declined. Whereas Russians during Soviet power did not have to worry a whole lot about costs with housing, food, etc, such costs now take up more than half of a family's income. The regime that Putin heads has slashed spending on medial services, and enacted a law in 2010 that turned clinics and hospitals into commercial establishments, leading to the abolition of universal health examinations for the population. Education has similarly been commercialized, which has had the effect of denying children access to quality education like they had in Soviet power. Putin's regime has not invested in any industry, science, agriculture, or education. Hundreds of billions of dollars are sent abroad, with tens of billions more lost every year because of corruption. Soviet industry produced 20% of the world's output, whereas the same lands today produces five times less, while scientific-intensive production is only 0.5% of the world.
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