Is Putin Preparing a Governmental Purge?

THE SAKER — As he does once a year, last week President Putin spend over three and a half hours answering 80 questions out of the 3+ million questions which were received. The show, which was aired live on Channel One, Rossiya-1 and Rossiya-24 TV channels, and the Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Rossii was an unprecedented success which was watched and commented upon by millions of Russians.

The main Russian TV channel, Rossia-1, also aired not one, but two special talk-shows solely dedicated to a discussion of Putin’s performance. These talk-shows are the famous “Evening with Vladimir Soloviev” – by far the highest visibility talk-show on Russian TV. Just for the record, Rossia-1 is the crown-jewel of the powerful and state-controlled All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company (VGTRK) media holding. Between the call-in show with Putin (3 hours and 40 minutes), the first talk show (2 hours and 12 minutes) and the second talk show (1 hour 44 minutes) the Russian public was exposed to a stunningseven and a half hours of discussion. Some will call it “propaganda”, which can be viewed as negative or as positive, but which changes little. The main issue here is that this was a major, huge, public-communications effort. So what was the overall message which was conveyed by all this? Let me summarize it for you:

First, Putin is the unchallenged and beloved leader of all the Russian people, he is an extremely effective manager, a defender of the simple Russian people everywhere and he is the last recourse for those who have been wronged by the authorities. Let me add here that all the opposition party heads fully agreed with this. Right now, nobody in Russia dares to criticize Putin personally, not because some KGB goons are going to come in the night and drag him away to a concentration camp, not at all, but simply because bad mouthing Putin is now tantamout to political suicide. Even some members of the non-system political opposition (aka 5^th columnists) are realizing this now.

Second, a lot of Russian people are hurting, badly. Not because of sanctions or the drop in the prices of gas and oil, but because of the corruption, incompetence and ideological blindness of the “economic block of the Russian government”. The economy is a mess due to corrupt governors, lazy government bureaucrats and outright sabotage by a quasi-universally hated “economic block of the government”. Sanctions (especially the denial of credits) and the fall in the price of oil do make things worse, but they are not the real problem or even a major part of the problem.

Third, the individuals responsible for this mess are regularly mentioned by name. This hatred for the “economic block of the government” is never openly encouraged by Putin himself who, when directly asked, praises the work of the government’s ministers. Everybody else, however, including all the opposition figures and even the host Vladimir Soloviev, is now openly calling not only for resignations but even for jail terms for the guilty governors and even ministers. While Medvedev himself is rarely the personal target of such denunciations, Arkadii Dvorkovich (Deputy Prime Minister), Igor Shuvalov (First Deputy Prime Minister), Alexei Uliukaev (Minister of Economic Development) and Anton Siluanov (Minister of Finance) are now “openly hated” on Russian TV.

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