Khabarovsk A Russian city IN SIBERIA
another anti-Kremlin protest over detained governor
LONG LIVE THE BOURGEOIS DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION FOR DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM
Reuters•August 8, 2020
MOSCOW (Reuters) - About 3,000 people joined another march in the Russian far eastern city of Khabarovsk on Saturday in protest over President Vladimir Putin's handling of a local political crisis.
Residents of Khabarovsk, around 3,800 miles (6,110 km) and seven time zones east of Moscow, are protesting for a fifth consecutive weekend against the detention of Sergei Furgal, the wider region's popular governor.
Furgal was arrested on July 9 in connection with murder charges he denies.
Regional authorities estimated around 2,800 people took part in the latest march, a smaller turnout than previous weeks.
Reuters images showed people marching with posters reading, "Give us back Furgal" and, "Away with the repressions".
Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Mike Harrison)
Reuters images showed people marching with posters reading, "Give us back Furgal" and, "Away with the repressions".
Reporting by Maria Kiselyova; Editing by Mike Harrison)
Khabarovsk. is the largest city and the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located 30 kilometers (19 mi) from the Chinese border, at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri Rivers, about 800 kilometers (500 mi) north of Vladivostok.
https://russiatrek.org/khabarovsk-city
ARGUMENT
Normal Is Over for Russia’s Hinterland
The ongoing protests in Russia’s far east aren’t a one-off—they’re a preview of the future of the country’s periphery.
The Far Eastern Russian city of Khabarovsk, located just 19 miles from the Chinese border, was not incorporated into the Russian Empire until the mid-19th century. Imperial Russia’s control over its easternmost regions was always shaky: It’s hard to keep tabs on a place that lies thousands of miles away from the capital, across ancient forests and frozen rivers. Today, eastern Russia is poor and sparsely populated, a booming China is eager to exploit Russian lumber and other resources in the area, and the locals are restive, as evidenced by a series of major protests in Khabarovsk and neighboring cities over the past month.
Throughout Russia’s years under President Vladimir Putin, hot spots of resentment and anger have flared up now and then across the country. Protests in the provinces have tended to center on economic questions such as pensions, tariffs, and tolls, while more glamorous pro-democracy protests—the ones most likely to attract international attention—have been concentrated in Moscow. But bread-and-butter issues may have greater potential to unify a sprawling country, and more than one empire has fallen thanks to unrest in its hinterlands.
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The Khabarovsk demonstrations began after the July 9 arrest of the region’s governor, Sergei Furgal, who is accused of ordering four murders in 2004 and 2005. The people of Khabarovsk were furious at the arrest, which they viewed, quite reasonably, as a Kremlin plot against democracy. Pro-Furgal memes circulated online, a petition garnered more than 30,000 signatures, and in a city of just 600,000 people, tens of thousands came out to protest. There have been daily rallies, with major demonstrations every Saturday. Chants have included slogans such as “Our vote, our Furgal” and “Putin, resign.”
Furgal didn’t set out to become an opposition hero. Before going into politics in 2005, he ran businesses that managed lumber and scrap metal, two hypercompetitive industries in the Far East that are often connected to organized crime. (Local voters are willing to excuse a checkered past.) He was elected in 2018 in a surprise victory over the United Russia incumbent, Vyacheslav Shport. Then a long-serving member of the State Duma, Furgal didn’t even bother to think up a campaign slogan for his gubernatorial run. His billboards showed only his face and name, without even stating which position he was running for. But United Russia, Putin’s party, had so angered voters with its attempts to raise the retirement age that many voted for Furgal simply because he was the candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party, which opposed the change. Furgal virtually tied with Shport in the first round. Despite reported pressure from the Kremlin to drop out, Furgal remained in the race—though he did leave town during the runoff to avoid unduly influencing the results. He won 70 percent of votes in that second round. The Kremlin punished him by changing the Far Eastern Federal District’s capital from Khabarovsk to Vladivostok, and by opening an investigation against a former governor who had supported Furgal’s campaign.
This retaliation made Furgal a “symbol of popular resistance,” according to Meduza’s Andrey Pertsev. Furgal experimented with a new identity, joining protesters and criticizing United Russia officials. The Liberal Democratic Party swept the 2019 Khabarovsk elections, though Furgal again declined to campaign. Putin’s ratings in Khabarovsk fell, provoking further federal wrath. The authorities raided a firm linked to Furgal and arrested his ex-business partner on murder charges; the ex-partner then testified against him on murder charges from his scrap-metal career. Furgal’s days of freedom were numbered.
Wild though the Khabarovsk scrap-metal scene may have been, it seems that the charges against Furgal are bogus.
Wild though the Khabarovsk scrap-metal scene may have been, it seems that the charges against Furgal are bogus.An investigation by the independent paper Novaya Gazeta suggested that two of the murders of which Furgal is accused were not his doing, but were the result of a mafia conflict involving a man called “the Crab” and a food-cart business. A third charge doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, and the fourth murder, which was committed by Furgal’s driver, occurred spontaneously after a spat over a scrap-metal delivery.
So far, federal authorities have responded to the Khabarovsk protests with a mixture of soothing promises and mild punishment. Given the harsh treatment of protesters in Moscow—for instance, widespread arbitrary arrests during last summer’s protests over unfair city elections—the relatively gentle treatment of Khabarovsk marchers suggests that Moscow may find it harder or less desirable to bully citizens in far-flung places. Mikhail Degtiarev, the Liberal Democratic Party member of the State Duma who was appointed acting governor on July 20, told residents that Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin had pledged 1.3 trillion rubles ($17.9 million) in funding for Khabarovsk. (Degtiarev has never lived in Khabarovsk and keeps leaving town during the weekend protests, to the disgust of the demonstrators.) Degtiarev also promised to create a “People’s Council” that could communicate popular demands to the governor.
Degtiarev posted on Instagram about armed and dangerous protesters and has made suggestions about foreign incitement, but he has avoided decisive action against the movement. So far, two protesters have been arrested and sentenced to weeklong jail terms for organizing unsanctioned rallies, two have been fined, and a few more have been detained before protests or attacked by unidentified men. But for the most part, the Khabarovsk police have let the marches continue unhindered. The most recent Saturday march, on Aug. 1, was the smallest so far, perhaps because of heavy rain that day. But “small” is relative: There were about 10,000 people marching.
The highest-profile protests of the Putin era thus far have been the demonstrations from 2011 to 2013 against election fraud, which centered in Moscow and included famous writers and many members of Moscow’s cosmopolitan, well-educated creative class. In response to this movement, which threatened to become a Russian version of a Ukrainian-style “color revolution,” Putin and his administration attempted to pit the Moscow and St. Petersburg creative class against the supposed silent majority of the Russian provinces. The Pussy Riot show trial, for example, was part of an effort to portray Moscow protesters as blasphemous European-style hipsters who spat on the faith of ordinary Orthodox Russians. It was easy to stimulate resentment against Moscow privilege: After all, the government had been concentrating power and wealth there since the 1990s, making the city into a top-tier glittering international capital even as the provinces languished.
But the provinces haven’t been as silent as the Russian government might like. Over the past two decades, there have been a number of significant protests outside Moscow and St. Petersburg. These have often been linked to straightforward economic grievances—in particular to falling living standards and efforts to dismantle the Soviet-style social safety net, which many Russians still consider to be a basic right. In 2005, an attempt to switch from in-kind social benefits to cash payments prompted protests in a dozen Russian cities. Demonstrators blocked highways and railways and took over government buildings. In 2008, the riot police broke up a demonstration in Vladivostok against new tariffs on imported cars; from 2009 to 2010, Kaliningrad residents demonstrated against new vehicle tariffs, and eventually against their United Russia governor and Putin. Beginning in 2015, truckers organized a strike against a new toll road system, and from 2017 to 2018 there were anti-corruption protests across the country, led by anti-corruption activist and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Anger against the 2018 proposal to raise the retirement age was not limited to Khabarovsk; it provoked protests in most of Russia’s major cities, and contributed to several significant losses for United Russia in the 2018 elections.
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