culture is that so much insight which of course he's right on it so here's hoping for the future in today's time the russians will go to the polls to elect their next president what is the nature of russia's political system how is it changed. and having with this is how this is r.t. life top stories now humanitarian aid enters the syrian city of homs off to government forces push the fighters from the stronghold but locals report that rebels are still in the area and are still killing. the prime minister and presidential hopeful vladimir putin says and it shows the opposition helps the government respond to the public mood brigette schools for an early parliamentary election. plus the majority of e.u. nations son alone delayed field to make economic discipline compulsory critics fear unrealistic expectations will hit struggling nations. more no stories.

now in the meantime the presidential poll will take place this weekend here in russia and coming up guess what awaits the country this sunday and beyond cross-talk is next. ok can. follow in welcome across the time people about voting for the future in two days' time russians will go to the polls to elect their next president what is the nature of russia's political system how has it changed over time and most importantly who is the russian voter. lists can the slim. cross not the upcoming presidential election here in russia i'm joined by dmitri barber chair in the studio with me he's an

independent political analyst in madrid we go to eric kraus he's an independent asset manager and author of the strategy monthly truth in beauty and in london we cross to jonathan steele he is the international affairs commentator for the guardian and all right gentlemen crossed out rules in effect and that means you can jump in anytime you want also i'd like to read remind our panel and my viewers that because of the russian election law we cannot speak specifically about polling numbers as of the twenty seventh to sunday the day of the election so we won't be using a lot of numbers here in this program ok eric kraus if i go to you first in madrid reading western media about this election it seems like the russian voter is very unidimensional do you think there's a typical russian voter and if there is a typical one how would you describe that voter. well i would say the typical russian voter if we can use mathematical averages is one who's going to vote for mr putin. we've heard a lot in the western press about how putin was losing his popularity how all the

facebook protests in moscow in the demonstrations meant that the regime was on its way out and of course when the polls which i can't give any numbers on but the polls have certainly shown a very substantial rise and that mr putin is going to sweep to victory in the first round so i understand that he is unpopular with some of the foreign powers and perhaps those people who have influence on the foreign press can russia. overall in the country he remains very popular in the studio here with me i mean how would you describe the voter because i mean if you read western mainstream media they focus a lot on what's called the opposition of the new opposition what i call the main opposition here in moscow and there are quite a few people that would probably fall into that category but it's look at the entire country i mean is it a liberal electorate a conservative electorate i mean obviously what eric had to say would say was more conservative well of course it's very difficult to talk about an average of all

together which you have you know russia is one of the more of those countries in the world it's very difficult to generalize here but in general i would say that the general trend is the following. typical russian of all to use a person who lived through some very difficult times. who has been feelin some discomfort especially in the last two or three years but who is still relational and who wants to have a perspective for himself we can still come and that person he might get a little disillusioned with the government in the last three years probably at the peak of these protests it was registered by this source all just north in december but in march last year. december it was all really between out but you know this person hadn't looked at all the. economically financially driven not politically driven or wind of the you know there were two or three very unpopular reforms in russia and to my mind not very successful reforms there was an education reform

there was a health care reform and just like in any country of today's world these are all people changes and none of these changes is called beneficial to everybody so these people are tired but haven't looked at the options the majority is going to support which in turn is that i go to you i think it's an interesting point that emerges brought up you know the options out there i mean if there is much as western media likes to demonize via tamir putin the options out there aren't that credible aren't that interesting actually. because that's where i think the average russian virtuous is such a person is relatively apathetic partly because they think there isn't much of a real choice and certainly because they think that putin is going to win it will be organized if he wins whatever the voters do so i think there's going to be probably more so he will get even if he wins and even if we give even if he wins it's rigged i mean it seems to me that kind of argument caved in on itself erick if i can go to you i mean it's just hard for the outside world to understand the drive

i mean of building this research popular. well there's something very embarrassing for the journalists which is since two thousand they have been warning us every issue of the economist every issue of the f.t. about that can pass through fees which are about to hit russia and the only problem with these catastrophes is they just don't seem to occur now if you read the press a few weeks ago there were these warnings that putin was finished he was done for and now the he's going to be massively reelected now. there is some degree of apathy i agree there have been some reforms which have been deadly conducted but you've got to realize we're talking about a country which twelve years ago was at the brink of the solution was falling apart could not pay its own bills could not feed its people you now have a wealthy middle class country with an assertive foreign policy which may not

please the west but tends to please the westerners so at least the russians so the point is that putin has incarnated the votes vox populi in russia russians the not the people not necessarily the upper middle class will speak english and live in moscow and go on facebook but the that all of the people in the countryside the people in the smaller cities the working class see themselves in putin it's what's extraordinary is after twelve years in power he's as popular as he is and he's going to win the election by a very wide margin and i think this is going to be embarrassing for some of the journalists who were predicting his the mud's you know jonathan i go back to you one of the things i living here in moscow one of the things i find is very interesting there is a generational difference and i think it was really spot on there there's a there's a generation that remembers the absolute agony of the one nine hundred ninety s. and then we have a younger generation of people that don't do not remember that because they were so

young and they have been brought up with amenities and i'm talking about moscow st petersburg are the major cities that you know that their western peers can identify with but then we have on the other hand a huge silent majority in this country i mean and not everyone lives in moscow and st petersburg. no that's true but i think russia has a huge internet audience numbers of people who go on the web is probably higher than in many europe western european countries so that they are even if they are living you know miles away from the borders of russia they are over the internet through cyberspace to the rest of the world and i think there is a among this younger generation did you talk about the doesn't remember the disaster of the yeltsin years and that is only you know coming perhaps to the election for the first time in their lives there is a great sense that they want things to be changed they want russia to be more like other countries they want to get rid of the corruption they want to get rid of the cynicism but they see it a lot of the us and i think that is why some of them may not vote at all because

they're disgusted with the system and others may vote for anybody but putin just to register the fact that they want to change they want a different elite this one has had twelve years as you say in power maybe it's time for a different one and it's been a very successful twelve years to relatively speaking going well you likely will see if your words you know i agree with john obviously people here actually hear this is certainly all right they're going to jump in and we're going to do. it is not this is the big people the russian people may want change but if they want change quite frankly it's not the change that the west wants to see if we look at the legislative elections the liberal opposition got crushed there there was some forcibly cation of results but the overall results were maybe off by five percent they were pretty much reflected through will of the russian people that if

you believe in democracy then you just have to let people vote the way they want to and the communists. advanced quite substantially in the election and the extreme nationalists the end of their advance it was a very very small vote for those people who want russia to be more like the rest of the world i think the russian people want the russians on very likely was also a very poor there was a very very good for the united russia party which is the ruling party politician even though it was polish so very very slow very much astonished so so so this idea that people love united russia and last guten i think let's wait until the election results come through well i would. agree with you know that russia is going to be the first i agree with a lot of what ganesan just said but you know just two years ago i would completely agree that russian voters are pathetic now that's not the case very good that's not

the case you know my niece was very young who didn't go to vault at the last election and who never was interested in politics today she works as an observer at the election she's withdraw her of steam she dislikes prosser of to be frank with you but she went there because it's interesting you and her if you do is i want russia to be a country where people choose their leaders. hugh might choose putin eighty percent sure she would vote for him because jonathan you are right you said that younger russians are too internet and you now have a lot of influence on them. i agree with you there are some people who are just angry with the government and who want to see change but they're not a majority even among the young people there are many young people who read the foreign press in english or they read it on in the press some of them speak other languages and they just meet by their future of the foreign press which expects us to do something like an arab revolution here so they're all sort of various you

know impulse us inside russian society but in general i would say that the general trend right now is very good russia has become an normal country in a normal country you have some young people who like to drop a ball to government if the government doesn't overreact there's going to be a normal country just don't expect if fifteen people with a wide driven you know speech some kind of a draw. at the red square on the street that doesn't mean we're going to have another nine hundred seventeen two more than just normal russia has become a normal country ok jonathan i mean i can't agree with him on this one i mean i think the participation level is amazing for i've lived in this country for twelve years and for the first time in twelve years people actually talk about politics i think that's fantastic go ahead. you know i think that's absolutely right and i perfectly agree with with dreamers think this is great and so i wonder if you're serious and i would like to add one point which is that one must not confuse united

russia with putin i think the united. and it was something in the legislative elections was much more a defeat for me and frankly i think that putin swap was mishandled was a bad idea putin should have simply modified the american jump in here really going to assure the bravery and i'm sure that short break we'll continue our discussion on the approaching election state are. taking the streets. if you can. as russia votes for president r.t. looks at the five running for the kremlin top job. a two time president and current prime minister and face of the united russia party. the

record. points to stability he secured after the chaotic e.l.c. years praised for overseeing a booming economy the establishing russia's presence on the world stage play for the presidency modernization fighting corruption maximizing russia's impact in international affairs controversy criticized for centralizing power in russia and staying at the helm to long. for personifying the problems positions and aspirations of modern russia. presidential election two thousand and twelve r.t. . you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so you think you understand it and then something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything is ok and you don't i'm sorry welcome to the big picture.

can. remind you we're talking about the march fourth presidential election in russia. can. live. ok gentlemen and one of the things i kind of like i mean i don't like to mimic richard nixon because that's not my political flavoring but i mean he did talk about the the silent majority and they can the rise of conservative ism in the united states and it seems to me that when we when we look at these protests that are all televised on russian television and you can get to watch plenty of it on youtube if you want is actually energized the silent majority because you know if you live outside of

moscow and st petersburg the amenities are not is great or you're right you can be on the internet that's fine ok you can be anywhere to be on the internet but the same time the amenities and i think a lot of people say look these people in moscow they're the ones that have benefited from twelve years of this political establishment and they're complaining about it and that's energized people outside of the major cities. well i think the main thing is that the people have been energized the protests are not doing it economically that's right is different from the arab spring the arab spring had a strong religious element in the protests the protests in western europe in greece and spain and portugal it's all about economics people who you know who are seeing their living standards cut the people who are mainly protesting in russia they're doing it for me for morality reasons if you like for ethical reasons not because they're not but i'm employed and so on as you point out but that doesn't devalue their criticism doesn't mean that you should drive a bridge between your wedge between them and the rest of the country they in a sense of the leading edge because they're saying look there is too much

corruption i'm not. so that himself when he was you know thought to be a powerful president unfortunately are not to be such and yet what he's done about corruption almost nothing all these we disagree with and i was. still on point is you have been right if i had followed just a little for it could i just finish the point i had all these russians abroad they're not all committed class you know you go only to the train to from domodedovo to moscow and these these are ordinary middle class kids who've been to sri lanka they've been to majok or they've been to sharm el sheikh or whatever it is they're not terribly wealthy but they've been a group and they want to we come back to a country which they feel proud of and not ashamed of which many of them feel now because of the corruption in the slowly as. a russian about. well i agree with jonathan on most of his points i would see that these protests are media protests very often just people are tired of seeing the same faces on television

for twelve years and i think it's understandable and i think basically understood that something has to be changed i think he realized there was too much of the same features so you know he's idea to write articles where he would explain to the people what he plans to do was a very good day dear and. you know no russians returning from a place like egypt or russia we don't have exactly the same feeling we had twenty years ago twenty years ago i remember the feeling was terrible you know you we felt joy you know when we went abroad and we felt depressed when we came home and now you look at them idea that will work even at the usually a meeting where these are not places you're ashamed of when you come back sometimes you have to pay money but this is a completely different country so indeed i would say that this is indeed an interesting situation where you have indeed some new you know impulses pollution people to be more active some of them go to process some of them make my niece

become of service but i don't expect a revolution in russia i expect gradual improvement eric you want to jump in there i think a number of points go ahead. yeah i think that first of all if you're flying from heathrow to the government debt over the new one of the proud of russia because. the there has been so much there that this really great deal of improvement. we're talking i mean people tend to be ok they want new faces well this is not an illusion reality show this is the governance of the country and i would suspect that a large percentage of the russian people feel well things could be better things could always be better but they are getting better and if you're coming from egypt back to russia i don't really think there's much to feel ashamed if you're coming from now your will spain where i'm speaking from right now is in the extremely

perilous economic situation one of the problems is when we talk about russia people tend to russians in particular tend to speak like as soon as you get across the border you are in heaven you are in countries ruled by the holy ghost now i would look at the appalling deterioration of the democratic process in the united states and to great extent in the u k. and the sort of economic harry carry which is being carried out in the west in western europe and maybe the russians sort of look at broad and say do we want to live like that we want to have the same problems that you do and maybe the answer is not and if you go back you want a time when the russians were ashamed to be russian look at the one nine hundred ninety s. look at the yeltsin years when basically we had a government which was very largely beholden to the west which was very popular because they were doing what washington and brussels and london wanted to do. and

the situation was not a happy one and so right now i think russians can feel a certain pride in the fact their country is independent and is assertive and is increasingly wealthy you know jonathan i think one of the interesting things is that. in looking at political change of the last twenty years that's something that's been a little bit more global here is that you know when. the first putin was first president he introduced a number of political reforms that a lot of people were very skeptical about but one thing about governors about the threshold for political parties signatures signatures for candidates and things like that and that was in put in play and it created a great deal of stability now we're hearing these sounds that you know now they're going to ease down on some of those things or so it really would be the political route we need political reform with the dance going in the economy with the financial sector and things like that there needs to be a little bit more balance there don't you think. you know i think that and i hope that after the election there won't be some kind of clamping down on these so you

know all this political activity that we've seen over the last six to nine months would be you know the pressure is on. and so on i mean i just hope that the. relaxed sort of punish people go in the opposite direction do you know what do you think about that i think that you know people are you know i said repeatedly on this station that i am so happy to see a protest movement here because it gets everybody into a conversation about politics about their future of their country and we're seeing it now and i think it's healthy and i think i think the ruling elite these there to be very frank with you now. you know. there is a problem with the russian position i hope there will not be any ground down from the government but i hauled we will see some new faces in the position you specially in the media part of your work yes because the media people inside their position they have been the same for eighteen nineteen twenty years they have been

here for a much longer time than mr putin and indeed there is a problem in all during these meetings few people noticed that i during these meetings i was of people in the crowd out there not quite happy with the people who were standing at the podium but problem is he didn't have an alternative so i hope we'll have some alternative not the nationalists like crew off always mean more of who cracked up to be a real racist just read his next. last article in give them a stick and not not these kind of racists but you know really liberal moderate maybe social democratic european thinking people in the best sense of the world european not in the sense of the more than you think you're not ok erica finally i think i'm really glad to be a member of this now because we're looking at the nature of the eye. opposition here there's a lot of really nasty elements in it and i think a lot of western media doesn't like to focus in on it because it's embarrassing ok

and we have these ultra. communists you know socialist that want you reprivatize the economy and then you go to the other extreme that are diskin heads and you have national bolsheviks but it's this kind of embarrassing to talk about them and it's everyone's put into the same rubric of oh they're white ribbon nice people they drive s.u.v.s. the mayor is so right in in what he says i have lived in russia for the last fifteen years and i've been basically following it for twenty and the quality of the opposition has been systematically poor and it's now popular to blame too too for that but it was equally bad during the yeltsin years. and we take some of the people who've been lionized by the western press we have perspire of who's madder than i had are we have. no value who is clearly paid by the americans we have. there it's really very difficult to find prophet of who. can't really even taking

terribly seriously. russia is not really ready for a brew scully and i struggle to find it. does need an opposition and we need political change and certainly i mean i take a counterpoint to the western press the sort of demonization of putin but he's not perfect and he's mortal and we're going to political system is going to have to evolve towards a more poor listing system and thus far i don't see it happening i'm not sure that a russian opposition is going to be a pretty sort of western style liberal one but even if it's sort of a nationalistic. patriotic our position but one which represents the witches of the russian people this would be very important if it were only to provide some prospect of alternation of government in some time going forward ok jonathan if i

go back to you in london we want you said you worry about a possible clampdown i would say just reversed i think i i worry about seeing this this opposition group just tear itself apart because as usual russian intellectuals they just love to be you know alpha dog you know and you know in then people going to walk away if i can't run it then you know i'm not going to be part of it out. it's not my party i'm not going to participate and we've seen that systematically for the last twenty years everyone likes to blame the current ruling elite but the fact of the matter is that these people have never been able to agree among themselves and maybe what they need is a new face and they could in the old opposition and some of the names already been mentioned will step aside you think that's a possibility well i don't know but i mean i think there's some contradictions in what you just said on the one hand you talk about the opposition as a model of this sort of saying this opposition is hopeless ten minutes later you say this opposition. has one thing in common they're against one person so it's not contradictory whatsoever after the fact then it will become very contradictory but i think i think you know i think you're out of date i mean that piece many of these

protests. this is the speakers were chosen by the members of the demonstration here on this on the web saying who they do and i think because i didn't work because they ended up with some of the most ugly characters and i'm afraid gentlemen will run out of time many thanks to my guests today here in the studio in london and in madrid and thanks to our viewers for watching us here are see you next time and remember crosstalk.

we all make choices sometimes it's tough. but it can be an easy call. and choice can be left to fate. or it can be. minute.