USSR2 File: Putin accuses USA of meddling in Russian election; Kasparov jailed, Nemtsov and Belykh detained, Yabloko regional leader dies of wounds

Neo-Soviet Russia is less than one week away from its potemkin State Duma election. Both the Kremlin-controlled and independent media are predicting that crypto-Stalinist United Russia, on which party list President Vladimir Putin tops, will steal (probably literally) at least 55% of the vote, with the Communist Party of the Russian Federation/Soviet Union being the only other party to obtain seats, if any. The CPRF is confidently projecting up to 35% of the vote for itself. The names of the parties in Russia's rubberstamp parliament, however, are irrelevant. The Red Team rules in Moscow and will present itself to the world when the Soviet strategists have consoldiated all of their gains against the West. In his most recent provocation against the West, Putin has accused the USA of meddling with the election process in Russia:

The United States is trying to taint the legitimacy of upcoming Russian parliamentary elections by pressing a group of prominent independent election observers to abandon their attempts to monitor the campaign. According to information we have, it was again done at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department and we will take this into account in our inter-state relations with this country. Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal.

The New York Times, below, reports too that during the present Duma election campaign: "The Kremlin repeatedly delayed the issuing of visas to the group’s monitors, preventing them from observing the campaigning for Parliament around the country, as well as news coverage, as is customary."

Putin Says U.S. Is Meddling in Russian Election
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY
MOSCOW, Nov. 26

President Vladimir V. Putin today accused the United States of trying to taint the legitimacy of upcoming Russian parliamentary elections by pressing a group of prominent independent election observers to abandon their attempts to monitor the campaign.

Mr. Putin contended that the election monitors, who are deployed by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, had canceled their plans to monitor the parliamentary balloting because of pressure from the State Department in Washington.

Mr. Putin’s statements in recent weeks have taken on an increasingly nationalistic tone as he has sought to muster support for his party in the balloting on Sunday. Speaking to reporters today in St. Petersburg, he once again criticized what he suggested was foreign meddling in Russia’s affairs.

“According to information we have, it was again done at the recommendation of the U.S. State Department and we will take this into account in our inter-state relations with this country,” he said. “Their goal is the delegitimization of the elections. But they will not achieve even this goal.”

In focusing on the supposed role of the State Department in the decision, Mr. Putin was highlighting a charge first made on Nov. 19 by the chairman of Russia’s Central Election Commission, Vladimir Y. Churov.

Mr. Churov noted at a news conference that the monitoring group had abandoned its mission soon after its director, Ambassador Christian Strohal of Austria, visited Washington. Mr. Strohal’s aides said subsequently that the timing of the visit and the decision had been coincidental.

A spokeswoman for the election observers today called Mr. Putin’s assertion “nonsense.” The United States Embassy in Moscow would not immediately comment.

The election-monitoring arm of the O.S.C.E., the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, or O.D.I.H.R., announced on Nov. 16 that it was canceling its mission to Russia, saying that restrictions imposed by the Russian government had made it impossible for it to carry out its work. The State Department and European diplomats supported the decision.

Urdur Gunnarsdottir, a spokeswoman for the monitoring arm, said Mr. Putin was misinformed about the reasons for the group’s withdrawal.

“This was a decision that was simply based on the fact that we were not receiving any visas and time had run out,” she said.

“The only consultation that took place was within our office with the people that plan these observation missions and carry them through. They have 150 observation missions under their belt. They know by now what needs to be in place to do this.”

Mr. Putin has turned the parliamentary elections into a referendum on his leadership, and in recent days he has stepped up his campaigning for his party, United Russia. At the same time the Kremlin has used its control over the election laws, government agencies and the news media to ensure that the opposition has little if any chance of gaining a foothold in the next Parliament.

Over the weekend, the opposition coalition, which is headed by Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, held rallies and marches in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other cities. The rallies were broken up by riot police officers, with hundreds of people detained. Mr. Kasparov’s movement, Other Russia, contends that Mr. Putin is creating a Soviet-style dictatorship in Russia.

Mr. Kasparov himself was arrested in Moscow on Saturday when he tried to deliver a letter to the federal election authorities assailing the conduct of the election, and a judge sentenced him to five days in jail.

In St. Petersburg on Sunday, two well-known opposition politicians, Boris Y. Nemtsov and Nikita Y. Belykh, leaders of a mainstream liberal party, the Union of Right Forces, were briefly detained.

O.D.I.H.R. has monitored every election in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Its presence was viewed as an effort by Moscow to ensure that elections complied with international standards.

But the Kremlin has in recent years chafed at the group’s reports, contending that they were biased against the government.

After the 2004 presidential elections, which Mr. Putin won in a landslide, the group stated flatly that the campaign had not been conducted fairly.

In recent months, Russian officials maintained that monitoring group needed to be reformed.

At the same time, the Kremlin repeatedly delayed the issuing of visas to the group’s monitors, preventing them from observing the campaigning for Parliament around the country, as well as news coverage, as is customary.

Russian officials then abruptly said they would sharply limit the size of O.D.I.H.R.’s mission to only 70 people, down from 400 in the parliamentary election in 2003.

Putin's public but "non"-member association with United Russia, the founders of which, like Putin himself, are all "ex"-communists as we have elsewhere shown, has prompted intriguing comments from Russia's hidden Leninist leaders. A televised speech that Putin recorded last Thursday at the Ostankino television studio will be broadcast this week. The independent Moscow Times reports:

Putin Taking to TV in Pre-Vote Address
Monday, November 26, 2007. Issue 3793. Page 3.
By Natalya Krainova Staff Writer

President Vladimir Putin will deliver a nationally televised address this week, ahead of the Dec. 2 State Duma elections in which he is heading the United Russia ticket, the Kremlin said Friday.

Putin recorded the speech Thursday morning at the Ostankino television complex, but the date and time -- as well as the channels that will broadcast it -- have yet to be determined, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.

Peskov declined to discuss the issues Putin will address, but he confirmed that the speech was recorded at Ostankino -- not at the Kremlin -- because Putin would be speaking as head of the United Russia list, not as the president.

Opposition parties have accused Putin of violating election laws by using his office and unparalleled media access to campaign for United Russia.

Channel One television's evening news Wednesday featured a 16-minute report on Putin's aggressive speech to 5,000 supporters in which he described his political opponents as greedy "jackals" taking orders from foreign patrons.

Central Elections Commission chief Vladimir Churov told a news conference last week that Wednesday's speech did not violate election laws, which require equal media coverage for all parties.

Election laws bar parties from campaigning as of Saturday.

Citing "two sources close to the presidential administration," Vedomosti reported Friday that the speech would last several minutes and echo much of Putin's speech Wednesday.

Citing no one, Kommersant reported Friday that the speech would "contain some news about the relationship between Putin and United Russia," an apparent reference to the possibility of Putin joining the party.

Putin is not a party member.

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov told Rossia television channel he will vote for United Russia in the Duma vote. Ivanov has been tipped as one candidate to succeed Putin.

Today's edition of the communist organ Pravda admits that Putin's identification with United Russia is in truth designed to push voters away from that party and toward others such as the CPRF itself. Pravda also suggests that Putin's overbearing support for ER will polarize Russian society into two camps before he "decouples" from the party and resumes his "non-partisan" role as "national leader."

Putin will appear on TV screens to appeal to Russia’s potential electors and citizens of the country. United Russia’s current campaign is peculiar for its artificial identification of state and civil interests with the interests of the nation’s political power. The president’s speech will be the embodiment of this fusion.

The address will also illustrate Putin’s closer ties with United Russia, which is a contradictory process for Putin. One the one hand, the image of a party leader does not bring the president any good because it automatically puts an end to his role as the national leader. On the other hand, it gives Putin a chance to win the voters who have not made their final political choice. However, this excessive psychological pressure may push many voters away from United Russia. This is exactly what the Communist Party hopes for.

Most likely, Putin will achieve his goal, and United Russia will win most seats at the elections. It is not ruled out that the Russian society will then split into two groups standing for and against the new incumbent powers. Afterwards, Vladimir Putin may decouple from the United Russia party and retrieve his role of the national leader.

Meanwhile, the crypto-communist Putinist regime continues its reign of red terror against the country's dwindling liberal movement. In The New York Times article above the arrests of chess champion-turned-opposition activist Garry Kasparov and the temporary detention of Union of Right Forces leaders Boris Y. Nemtsov and Nikita Y. Belykh were reported. In Dagestan Yabloko's regional leader Farid Babayev, who was the target of an assassination attempt on November 22, has died of his wounds. State-run Russia Today reports:

Politician dies after attack in Dagestan
November 24, 2007, 11:13

The leader of the Yabloko party in Dagestan has died in hospital following an assassination attempt on Wednesday. Farid Babayev fell into a coma after he was shot outside his house in the republic's capital Makhachkala.

Yabloko's party leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, claims the murder was politically motivated.

“Farid Babayev was a human rights activist, he had been looking into and fighting against kidnappings in Dagestan, corruption cases and the consequences of military operations that resulted in innocent peoples' deaths. He sharply criticized Dagestani authorities.

We think it's becoming more common that people who talk badly about the authorities find themselves under pressure... Now it's the shooting of a party list leader ten days before the election.

We think it's a vivid example of the atmosphere around the election in Dagestan in particular and in Russia in general,” he said.

Vladimir Kryuchkov, State Emergency Committee Putschist Dies, During Last Days Urges Russian Security Agencies to Rally Around Putin

In a related story, Vladimir Kryuchkov, former KGB director and State Emergency Committee putschist, died of an "unspecified illness" this past Friday. A colleague of coup mastermind and current Communist Party of the Soviet Union Chairman Oleg Shenin, Kryuchkov was invited to Putin's 2000 presidential inauguration. In a 2005 interview with Kommersant Daily Valentin Falin, former head of the International Department of the old CPSU, admitted that the August 1991 coup, per KGB Major Anatoliy Golitsyn's analysis in The Perestroika Deception (1995, 1998), was a feint designed to deceive the West into believing that communism was in its death throes. Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was apprised of the coup attempt beforehand.

Last month, The Moscow Times reports below, Kryuchkov and other KGB veterans, responding to "turf battles" between Russia's security organs, "called on the feuding forces to unite behind President Vladimir Putin."

Leader of KGB Coup Dead at 83
The Associated Press

Vladimir Kryuchkov, the former KGB chief who spearheaded a failed coup against Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, has died, officials said Sunday. He was 83.

Kryuchkov died Friday in Moscow of an unspecified illness, a spokesman for the Federal Security Service said.

Kryuchkov worked with future Soviet leader Yury Andropov in the Hungarian Embassy in the 1950s. When Andropov became head of the KGB in 1967, he helped Kryuchkov rise through the ranks.

Kryuchkov in 1974 was appointed chief of the KGB's First Main Directorate in charge of spying abroad. In 1988, Gorbachev appointed Kryuchkov as KGB chief.

In August 1991, Kryuchkov joined other hard-line Communists who ousted Gorbachev and declared a state of emergency. The coup collapsed after three days, and Kryuchkov and other coup plotters were jailed but freed on an amnesty in early 1994.

Last month, Kryuchkov warned of "big trouble" if a turf battle between security agencies continues to fester. He and other KGB veterans called on the feuding forces to unite behind President Vladimir Putin.

Kryuchkov's funeral is planned for Tuesday.

Kryuchkov's unwavering support for and endorsement of "ex"-communist Putin unquestionably proves the continuity of the Soviet leadership and strategy since the fake collapse of communism. In short, the CPSU continues to execute its long-range plan for world revolution.