Yavlinsky Officially Becomes Fourth Registered Candidate
The Central Election Commission has announced the registration of a fourth presidential candidate: Yabloko founder and liberal economist Grigory Yavlinsky.
Yavlinsky ran in 1996, 2000, and 2012, but was barred from running in 2012 after the commission ruled too many of his public signatures were invalid.
The other three candidates so far are Putin, the LDPR's Zhirinovsky, and the Communist Party's Pavel Grudinin.
Washington Renames Street Outside Russian Embassy After Nemtsov
By RFE/RL
WASHINGTON -- The city council of Washington, D.C., has renamed the street where Russia's embassy is located to honor the memory of slain Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in a move that Moscow has complained about.
Vladimir Kara-Murza Jr., the chairman of the Boris Nemtsov Foundation For Freedom, said on February 6 that an official ceremony to rename the block of Wisconsin Avenue as Boris Nemtsov Plaza is scheduled for February 27, the third anniversary of Nemtsov's assassination.
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An "exotic idea" is the way Aleksei Pushkov, a senior pro-Kremlin lawmaker in Russia, has described a vote in Ukraine's parliament to urge the international community to demand that Russia not conduct its presidential election in Crimea, occupied and annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
Pushkov tweeted that "the world community is not voting in Crimea and nothing in Crimea depends on it [the world community]."
Via Interfax:
PESKOV: PUTIN CAN VOTE IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION IN ANY REGION OF RUSSIA, NOT AWARE OF HIS PLANS TO DO IT IN SEVASTOPOL
Election Observers & 'Russia 1' vs. 'Russia 2'
Political scientist Yekaterina Shulman explains on YouTube the importance of having observers at elections and talks specifically about their importance in the context of the Russian elections.
During elections, she says, we can talk of two different Russias.
In "Russia 1," which consists of cities and central Russian regions, it is harder for authorities to pull off brazen falsifications. In "Russia 2," which includes North Caucasus regions or for instance rural Russia, falsifications are more possible. But the boundary between the two can move, and election observers can make a difference, influencing where this dividing line falls.
More Grudinin And Stalin
I'm guessing this guy's no Grudinin fan. A "Baby Stalin" meme? Follows up on Grudinin's lavish praise.
Putin may for the first time cast his vote not in Moscow but at a polling station in the Crimean city of Sevastopol, newspaper Kommersant writes on February 7.
Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 was met with jubilation in Russia, and the authorities appear to have shifted the date of these elections so that they fall on March 18, the fourth anniversary of the annexation.
But Putin's purported plans to cast his vote in Crimea could reflect the desire to boost turnout there and illustrate the "lack of administrative successes" in the region in 2014, the newspaper writes. In September 2016, at the first federal elections held under Russian control, turnout was just 49 percent.
Grudinin says Stalin Russia's greatest leader of last 100 years
"What other leaders have we had? If you don't count Lenin -- he was more a theoretician and he didn't manage to bring many of his ideas to life since he died young," mk.ru quotes the Communist Party candidate as saying.
Stalin is good, Grudinin says, because "he took an absolutely illiterate country and turned it into the country with the very best education," increased the country's GDP by 15 percent, and created Soviet medicine (which amazed the Americans and British).
Grudinin acknowledges that Stalin repressed people but says he didn't murder them.
He says he opposes showing the Death of Stalin movie despite an "extremely negative" view of censorship. "We shouldn't laugh at people who are in the grave. That isn't art, but a mocking of our history." He says it isn't a matter of censorship but of "decency."
Ninety minutes of raw video feed of Sobchak at CSIS. It was a 15-minute talk by Sobchak followed by a Q&A session. (You can get our rundown by Mike Eckel in Washington here.)