three thirty pm in moscow here are the headline russians head to the polls to choose their next president will govern the country for a six year term that's promised to be the most transparent approach to date with observers and web cameras monitoring every polling station and. take a look back at the week's other top stories china calling for an immediate ceasefire in syria and warning against using humanitarian aid as a pretext for interference in the country's internal affairs this is because of outside involvement escalate as around one hundred suspected mercenaries including french fighters are caught in the war torn city of homs. also e.u.

states signed up to toughen up to tough budget rules to stop overspending but britain and the czech republic find the idea too hard to swallow rallies happening in several european countries against harsh cuts imposed to save the single currency. and as russia chooses its next leader kira labelling gas debate what voters might be expecting from the winner of the vote stay with us here on r.p. . can.

we 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 is the russian voter. list can. live. across not the upcoming presidential election here in russia i'm joined by going to be bob a 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 and 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 three 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 unique dimensional 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 voters are going to use mathematical averages is what i'm 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 but russia. overall in the country he remains very popular even if in the studio here with me i mean how would you describe the voter because the minute if you read western mainstream media they focus a lot on what's called the opposition of the new opposition what i called the mink 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 or conservative electorate i mean obviously what eric had to say would say it was more conservative well of course it's very difficult to talk about an average of all to because 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 that is a person who lived through some very difficult times. who has been feelin some discomfort especially in the last two or three years white who is still relational

and who wants to have a perspective for himself and for his children 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 you all just not in december but in march last year. december it was already between art but you know this person hadn't looked at all the clearly don't think those are suggesting it's economically financially driven not politically driven or when do 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 coldly beneficial to everyone so these people are tired but haven't looked at the options the majority is going to support jonathan and i think it's an interesting point that the image is brought up you know the options out there i mean if there is much as western media likes to

demonize by the mere putin the options out there aren't that credible aren't that interesting actually. that's why i think russian virtuousness such a person is relatively apathetic partly because they think there isn't much of a real choice and secondly because they think that is going to win it will be organized that he wins whatever the virtues do so i think there's probably more so he really 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 caves in on itself erick if i can go to you i mean it's just hard for the outside world to understand the glider mere building is 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 the catastrophes 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 badly conducted but you've got to realize we're talking about a country which twelve years ago was at the brink of this solution was falling apart could not be installed 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 tends to please the westerners so at least the russians so the point is that putin has incarnated the votes what's popular in russia russians the not the people not necessarily the upper middle class who speak english and live in moscow and go on facebook but the dog the people in the countryside the

people in the smaller cities the working class see themselves and putin it's what's extraordinary is after twelve years in power he says 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 is the mud's you know if i go back to you one of the things i'm 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 brought up with amenities and i'm talking about moscow st petersburg are the major cities that you know that their western peers kind of benefit 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. well 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 than in europe western european countries so that they are even if they're 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 through the election for the first time in their lives there is a great sense that they want things to be changed they won't rush to be more like other countries they want to get rid of the corruption they want to get rid of the cynicism that they see in a lot of the rulers 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 put it 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 ok but it's been a very successful twelve years to relatively speaking go ahead well you likely will say a few words you know i agree with gone

a little people here listening to me here this is certainly all right they're going to jump in with a dimmer. it is not the 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 crushed there there was some falsely cation of results but the overall results were maybe off by five percent then pretty much reflected through will of the russian people that if you believe in democracy then you just have to let the 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 want more like there was

also a very poor there was a very very for the united russia party which is the ruling party even gave instructions are very very slow very much astonished so so so this idea that people love united russia last good thing i think that's where all the election results come through well i would. agree with you no no no 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 or that's not the case in all my niece who is 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 is was brought out of steam she dislikes problem of to be frank with you but she went there because it's interesting you and her if you do it is i want russia to be a country where people choose their leaders. hugh might choose putin eighty

percent sure she would want for him because jonathan you're right you said that younger russians are the 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 foreign press in english or they redid on you know some of them speak other languages and they just meet by the edges 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 joke about the government if the government doesn't all the react that's going to be a normal country just don't expect fifteen people with

a white ribbons you know stage 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 for more than just normal rushes become a normal country 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 within reason because i thought a great absolutely serious and i would like to add one point which is that one must not confuse united russia with putin i think the united defeat and it was something of the defeat in the legislative elections was much more a defeat for me and frankly i think the putin swap was mishandled was a bad idea putin should have simply modified the american job in here really we're sure to bring them to that short break we'll continue our discussion of the

approaching elections states are. taking a. stand. russia votes for president archie looks at the five running for the kremlin top job candidate. sergey mironov of fair russia on the record the former senate speaker was a strong supporter of law we're pushing for ten years but in two thousand and eleven called putin's united russia the party of crooks and feeds plan for presidency free education and health care progressive tax collections placed government appointments controversy previously described himself as a pro kremlin candidate ready to run for the presidency abroad. for opposing

russia's accession to the. presidential election two thousand and twelve on party. wealthy british style. markets. can find out what's really happening to the global economy for no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to cause a report on r.t. . can. start. to. come across sometimes you know beltre imagine we're talking about the march fourth presidential election in rush. limbaugh can. live. ok gentlemen one of the things i kind of like i mean i don't like to mimic

our 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 conservatism in the united states and it seems to me that when we when we look at these protests that are a televised on russian television and you can get to watch plenty of it on you tube if you want is actually energized the silent majority because you know if you live outside of moscow the same 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 are going to trust the courtesan not doing it economically that's why this different from the arab spring the arab spring had a strong religious element in the protests the process 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 people who are mainly protesting in russia they're doing it for me for morality reasons for life ethical reasons they're not course they're not unemployed and so on you point out but that doesn't devalue their protest and doesn't mean that you should drive a wedge between your wedge between them and the rest of the country they in a sense of the leading edge because they say look there is too much corruption often with so god himself when he was you know thought to be a powerful president unfortunately are not to be such what he's talking about corruption almost nothing all these we disagree with i was. going to made a similar point if you can write a point but i just finished the point could i just finish the point i had all these russians are bored they're not upper middle class you know you can only believe 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 graunt and they want to 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 senate let me ask you as a russian about that. 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 they think basically understood that something has to be changed i think you realize that 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 it was a very good idea and. 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

look at the idea that will work even at the usual image of all 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 pushing people to be more active some of them go to process some of them wait my niece become observers but i don't expect a revolution in russia i expect gradual improvement eric you want to jump in there are a number of points go ahead. yeah i think that first of all if you're flying from heathrow to to domodedovo then you've one of the prouder of russia because. the there has been so much there but this really great deal of improvement. we're talking i mean people tend to they ok they want new faces well this is not

a television 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 spain where i'm speaking from right now is in an 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 great extent in the u k. and these sort of economic hairy kiri which is being carried out in the west in western europe and maybe the russians sort of look abroad and say do we want that we want to live like that we want to have the same problems they do

and maybe the answer is not and if you go back you want to time when 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 them 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 well for you know jonathan i think one of the interesting things is that. in looking at political change of the last twenty years it's 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 we're going to have a governor is 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 there so really with the deep political roots we need political reform with the dance made 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 was and i hope that off the election there won't be some kind of clamping down on this so you know all this political activity that we've seen over the last six to nine months would be you know the pressures on her. and so on i mean i just hope that they will remain relaxed and not sort of punish go in the obvious interaction do you know what do you think about that i think that you know people are you know i have said repeatedly on this station that i'm 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 he's there to be very frank with you and now. you know. not and for it nobody and

all which tickets hear talk unless. there is a problem with the russian position i hope there will not be any clambered down from the government but i hauled we will see some new faces in their position you specially in the media part of your work yes because the media people inside their position they have been this seeing forget eighteen nineteen twenty year 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 notice that when you're in these meetings i would of people in the crowd were not quite happy with the people who were standing at the podium the problem is he didn't have an alternative so i hope we'll have some alternative not the nationalists like crew off always mean ward who cracked up to be a real racist just read his next. lost article in via the mystic and not these kind

of racists but you know really liberal moderate maybe social democratic european thinking people in the best sense of the word european not in the sense of the more you think you're not ok erica thank you i think i'm really glad the demographics though because looking at the nature of the i. opposition here there's a lot of really nasty elements in it and i think that 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 to reprivatize the economy and then you go to the other extreme that are just skinheads and you have national bolsheviks but it's 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 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 putin for that but it was equally bad during the yeltsin years. and we take some of the people who lionized by the western press we have spare of who's madder than i had are we have. no value who is clearly paid by the americans we have. it there is it's really very difficult to find pro heard of who. can't really be taken terribly seriously. russia is not really ready for berlusconi and i struggle to find it you know 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 his mortal and we're going to political system is going to have to evolve towards a more poorly stick 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 if only to provide some prospect of alternation of government in some time going forward ok jonathan if i go back to you in london i mean when you said you worry about hostile clampdown i would say just reverse i think 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 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 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 well step aside you think that's a possibility well i don't know but i mean i think there's some contradictions in much of the set on the one hand you talk about the opposition as a model of this sort of saying this opposition is hopeless two 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. 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. think is that didn't work because they ended up with some of the most ugly characters and i'm afraid gentlemen we'll run out of time many thanks to my guest today here in the studio in london and in madrid and thanks to our viewers for watching us here as you see you next time remember cross-talk rules.