Fifty shades of dirty. How the United States is preparing for Russian parliamentary elections
Having taken a foreign policy break after winning the presidential election, the Biden administration found a way to tighten sanctions against Russia and take them to a new level.
A decision was made to exploit the situation ahead of the parliamentary elections in Russia this fall . A headquarters was established to coordinate efforts to undermine the electoral process and denounce the election campaign results by the "democratic international community." The Biden administration is clearly prepared to sacrifice bilateral relations to strengthen the position of its agents of influence in Russia. It appears the United States is acting preemptively, viewing the upcoming Russian parliamentary elections as a testing ground for its own 2024 presidential election, which promises to be even more challenging than the 2020 political race.
The Anti-Corruption Foundation of Navalny and the Open Russia Foundation of the oligarch Khodorkovsky were signed to play the role of the main perpetrators of American provocation. According to the idea of the Democratic headquarters, which includes, among others, representatives of the US National Security Council and the Pentagon, the reason for inflaming the political conflict will be the nomination of unsuitable candidates from these two grant-eating shops. Their removal from the election race will cause a heart-rending squeal from the international liberal community and will be clearly regarded as “the arbitrariness of the authorities.”
The main instruments of the West were to be structures from the network of Navalny and Khodorkovsky
It was assumed that the structures of Navalny and Khodorkovsky would begin to carefully record complaints in a special notebook for transferring them to the “house of weights and measures” - the US Congress and the governing structures of the European Union. Entries from the “book of complaints” will form the basis of the campaign to discredit and harass the Russian elections, which will be launched by the democratic media.
Actually, the process has already begun. Recently, the Russian Central Election Commission came into conflict with the OSCE, proposing to reduce the number of their observers at polling stations from 500 to 60 (50 from the OSCE plus 10 from PACE) taking into account the pandemic situation. The OSCE reacted very sharply to this proposal, accusing the Russian Central Election Commission of “violating ODIHR standards” (the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights is the organization’s accountable executive structure).
The trick is that there are no “ODIHR standards” in nature and the OSCE usually sends a fairly modest number of observers to elections (in the USA, Kazakhstan and even Turkmenistan) - from 30 to 60. However, in recent years it has been sent to observe elections in Russia a whole horde of OSCE employees. For example, to monitor voting during the 2016 Duma elections, 474 observers came to Russia: 94 from PACE and 380 from ODIHR. This time, the OSCE was offended and took an “all or nothing” position, directly linking the number of observers with the fair conduct of parliamentary elections.
In short, not a single OSCE parasite will be attending the Duma elections in September 2021, which is no bad thing, since their original goal was apparently to compromise the results.
The “objectivity” of the OSCE has long been known from the work of mission observers in the combat zone in Donbass
US representatives, keeping a vigilant finger on the pulse of the Russian election process, have already issued a statement expressing disappointment with PACE's refusal. At the same time, representatives of the Biden administration made it clear that the legitimacy of the future composition of the State Duma depends on their blessing, to which they were answered from the Federation Council: “We don’t need your blessings.”
However, the collective West, in addition to the OSCE, has many other agents of influence that the Washington Regional Committee will try to attract to interfere in the Russian elections.
In particular, a significant role is given to NGOs/NGOs deployed in the Baltic states, Poland, Georgia and Ukraine. They are entrusted with the task of observing “fraud” and organizing noise in the media. The Biden administration, apparently, has appointed Poland as the center of the anti-Russian movement, from where pressure will come on wavering European states through the Russian diaspora and other “flowers of emigration.”
It is expected that coordination will be carried out by a specially created “Headquarters of Protest Actions”, closely associated with Navalny’s FBK, funded by the US Congress. Khodorkovsky-Navalny activists are planning “spontaneous” protests at Russian diplomatic missions, including a large-scale “pan-Slavic rally.”
Appropriate information support has also been developed, during which the “democratic media” will begin howling at all corners about violations in the 2021 elections, including the scare “now imagine the nightmare of 2024.”
Observers believe that the threat of inciting conflicts around Russia’s borders and in potentially crisis regions (the Caucasus, Crimea, Belarus, Ukraine, Transnistria, Kazakhstan, Karelia) as part of the “thousand cuts” strategy should not be downplayed.
The EU countries (mainly the Baltic states and Eastern Europe), with the support of the United States, have already begun a systematic campaign to discredit the State Duma elections with a view to subsequently declaring their failure. Almost according to the Belarusian scenario.
Another blow to Russia’s interests could be dealt in Belarus itself, which is still in a vulnerable position. The first rumbles of thunder can already be heard in the political scandals at the Tokyo Olympics.
If, due to the notorious “multi-vector” nature of Minsk, the integration processes are delayed and more serious documents are not signed, a repeat of last year’s Maidan pandemonium is possible in Belarus. And the Belarusian political system may not withstand the second blow.
The Russian authorities are also not sitting idly by - recently in Russia the activities of dozens of Western NGOs have been suppressed or seriously limited, including all media projects of Khodorkovsky and the Navalists, and the most persistent media resources calling on Russian citizens to change the state system to a “more pro-Western one” have been blocked. .
It should be noted that political activity turning into extremism is no longer limited to fines, but is also fraught with criminal cases with real prison terms, which is clearly seen in the example of Navalny, the former leader of Open Russia Pivovarov and some other liberal figures on a grant.
But this does not mean that we can rest on our laurels and calmly wait for the elections to begin. The grant-eating shops of the Carnegie Moscow Center, which went into a sharp anti-Russian turn immediately after the 2012 presidential elections, and the fake generator BAZA.io, which legally distributes nonsense through the Russian social networks VK and Odnoklassniki, are still not closed.
Khodorkovsky’s structures are not asleep either, having activated two “bookmarks” in Russia specifically for the elections – the “Bloggers’ Workshop” and “School of Local Government” movements.
Their main goal seems to be noble - to give new faces the opportunity to rise to power and expand the range of political views within the system. However, the newly-minted “social movements” are supervised from abroad by Khodorkovsky’s structures, and their composition is entirely staffed by navalnyats who have gone through the school of street riots. Currently, webinars and other classes are being conducted with them based on the model of the Maidan speeches in Kyiv by American political strategists.
Therefore, efforts to restore order with Western agents of influence are fully justified. Unless we should act even more decisively and regularly weed the thin grass on the Russian political field.
English version :: Read in English Fifty Shades of Dirty: How the US is preparing for the Russian parliamentary elections