Paul Goble
Savannah, February 4 – The nature of the current Russian political system was shown by the response of the central government to the demonstrations in Kaliningrad, a Moscow commentator says. The powers that be at the center responded not when regional officials acted within the law but when they failed to violate it to suppress an anti-government demonstration.
In an article in today’s "Yezhednevny zhurnal,” Vladimir Nadein, who explicitly says that he does not like Putin, that the prime minister has done "enormous harm” to Russia, and that he should be removed tried for his crimes, argues that Moscow’s reaction to the events in Kaliningrad is itself an indictment of Putin’s system (ej.ru/?a=note&id=9854).
"When people in Kaliningrad came out with signs reading ‘Down with Putin!’” he writes, "this was entirely legal. ...