well. technology innovation all the developments from around russia. the future coverage. three thirty pm in moscow we're bringing you our special election coverage using your headlines it's official who has been elected president the results announced with more than ninety percent of the ballot precincts reporting he's managed to secure nearly sixty four percent of the. international and independent monitors remain positive over the votes conduct but observers from european monitoring bodies cite irregularities and unusual media time. the opposition claims serious

alleged role violations saying they'll be bringing people out to the streets yet again to protest against results activists and independent observers cite irregularities such as people turning up to vote at different polling stations several times. to bait show cross talk coming up with more on our election coverage . blowing welcome across dark i'm peter a little the return of lot of beer putin to the russian presidency how did the campaign change russian politics how will russia transform of the next sixty years and has a new dialogue started within society about the country's future. cross-talk

a new period in russian politics i'm joined by john laughlin in paris he's director of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation in london we have married a chef skee she is the chief editorial writer and a columnist at the independent and here in the studio with me is ben eris he is editor in chief of business new europe or across the uk rules in fact that means you can jump in anytime you want but i'm going to go to you first here in the studio was this election a game changer how old was this election different from previous elections it was different in the sense that you know it was a lot more democratic and so much that putin had to play gallery in the way that he hasn't done before i think the picture is a good thing yes yes i think the big change is you know up until this election putin has been above politics and he hasn't been a politician is just the president as i would if you want to call him however the demonstrations you know he was dictating i think debate by saying this is important and then everybody talked about it he chose the difference for this election is

that he did the demonstrations of pull them down into the process and then he's lost control of the debate and so he's become. responsible accountable in the way that he never has before which is not to say that he's responsible accountable in the way that we have in the west nevertheless it was the beginning of real politics if you like in russia just the beginning ok john what do you think about that at the. being of real politics and russia because i mean i wouldn't want to go as far as ben but i do like that there is a dialogue happening here when i worry about is that the opposition won't engage mr putin once he takes office again that's a worry here but there certainly is a conversation going on in russia now. yeah i mean it's possible and certainly the western media have made an awful lot of these demonstrations although we should never forget that they. in principle represent a fairly small if not tiny select section of the russian electorate my view on the result is that it's actually a mixed result of course it's

a victory for putin it doesn't help that held a new era because clearly he's been in power in one form or another since the year two thousand or indeed since one thousand nine hundred nine but it's a mixed result for him for two reasons firstly because of course the turnout was not particularly high that can have various explanations either apathy or a sense that nothing will change. and the other reason why it's a mixed result is that his popularity which of course is undeniable is at least in part due to the weakness of his opponents are not wishing to detract or rain on his parade because i think he is a very considerable statesman but the fact is he is also blessed with having weak opponents and i think one of the reasons why there might be a change that of the kind that ben has referred to an evolution in russian politics is for the very banal reason that the memory of the one nine hundred ninety s. is of course fading when he was elected back at the beginning of his first

presidential term he got seventy percent of the vote in two thousand and that was largely because he was seen as someone who would take control the memory of those years is going and now he will have to fight on his own record he cannot and he cannot for long continue to present prevent who presented himself what is the and i mean we've been there so good and you don't you think that's good i mean every politician should have to defend their record marriage of course you see you married so you know what do you think about that i mean that's that's perfectly fair that's normal politics ok. absolutely that's normal politics i mean i agree partly with ben and i agree partly with john too i think there's been a fatal weakness of the opposition which some people will blame on the way that portion has governed all route the last twelve years. other people and i think i would agree with them would say that. simply a weakness of the system since the fall of communism but it simply takes a very long time for real politics to develop and i think we have seen

quite a landmark on the way to real politics through this campaign then you want to jump in there i mean one of the things i think is very interesting here is it has been an enormous amount of focus on the liberal open opposition which fair enough that's what western media likes to cover but one issue i think that it's not been covering up and i think the other half of the story is the silent majority is beginning to speak beginning to stir a little bit here this is the conversation i'm talking about people who study you know i mean one of us said in more than one way it's a process it's evolution you know the russians it is changing in the ninety's it was a basket case and chaotic today it's more or less a normal country and you have before you had an intellectual opposition that was arguing putin in principle now you have a popular opposition and what that means is that people in the ninety's they were concerned with surviving and today they have a job or career or children birthrates going shooting or they're starting to worry

about normal things like property rights government services education pensions and they want to say this is a process i mean i think we can. spring this change and we'll be talking about it because the enemy even the people who are protesting you know they want to preserve their prosperity and that's key to them and so nobody wants the chaos of a violent regime change indeed they are actually quite happy to keep shooting in. but they want to be more accountable to listen to him so now it becomes very interesting going forward is to no avail i mean i mean the things that i find problematic about the opposition is that anybody but putin attitude which is very counterproductive john larkin if i can go to you because even the put into tractors we needed before the election he was by far the most popular politician in russia but you can still call it having said that you still can't have the slogan anyone but putin i mean it's contradictory and it's certainly counterproductive ok what i worry about is that they want to want to engage the new president well when they

say that it's a real it's a rift it underlines the weakness doesn't it because that's the only thing they agree on in the western media we concentrate exclusively on the liberal opposition but the fact is that when you look at the blogosphere and when you leave certain circles in moscow also the main opposition to putin is not new brutal it is precisely illiberal it is more nationalistic it is more anti western it is more conservative than the people who demonstrated at christmas time and you know it's only in this distorting prism of western and alice says that the liberal opposition have linsky and so on are put forward as if they were the only people opposing him they are not very is yesterday's always a show the biggest opposition party as we know is the communist party ok mary if i go to you you wrote a very interesting article right before the election and you talked about a generational divide and i think it's very interesting here because there's

a lot of young people here and it's already been mentioned this program about the nineteen ninety s ok how bad nine hundred ninety was what they don't remember that ok and maybe they their parents haven't been able to convey too well because you know what people don't want to remember about those miserable years how do you think this is going to play out because i've seen a lot of young people here even around me very idealistic and they do like some of the ideas of the opposition but are they going to be totalistic and not being engaging the new political reality. well i think there's two things that i'd like to say here i mean first of all that there are many layers in this generational differentiation in russia today there is the generation that remembers the bad old days of communism then there's the group that remembers as it were the bad old days of the ninety's and then there are the there are the younger people who were spared both of those and who now seem to be looking forward and wanting to engage in politics and who've been saluted in this by the social media by the internet

and by all the things that didn't exist before which allowed people to speak to each other and exchange ideas who are physically in very different places so that's the first thing i think it's worth saying. the second thing i think is that. the ideals if you like of the new generation are based on a decent standard of living this is something that the previous two groups in the groups the ninety's and the groups in the the soviet era groups really didn't have and i think while a lot of people in russians in the blogosphere were speaking about the effect or the affinity between the situation in russia and the situation in the arab countries which gave rise to the arab spring and they said well you know we have a lot in common with that because we had political stagnation we didn't have

complete freedom of speech etc etc but at the same time often the same people are saying yes but they're completely different from us because they are a lot of unemployed under educated young people especially young men who have no prospects and whose only solution as it were was to go out in the streets and protest we have very different prospects and we don't want revolution we want something we want a change. but we don't want a revolution we don't want to break things down then it's an aspirational evolution that people are talking about here yeah i mean this is and i tell you with the arab spring i think there were this is mary made the point i mean it you know the arab spring was driven by a quarter of the population in any one of those countries was under the age of twenty five and a large majority were unemployed and in russia the inflation and sort of the unemployment rate is a twenty year low and this revolution as such is being driven by the middle class

middle aged people professional people that have benefited over the last twelve years indeed going out into yeah no i mean you know ironically the people protesting on the liberal side are some of the main beneficiaries of all the changes that have happened but this is why this is going to be you know revolutions around what is going to be very civilized and it's a question widely cajun engaging the government and the government needs to engage back you know i mean that's the sea change here is is that the government up until this point has been concerned with the elites with getting the economy back on its feet which is talking about big companies monetize what have you and we've now gone past that point and now it needs to start engaging with the people in the small companies and employments and start raising standards of living and securing property rights and dealing with governments and since you know sort of normal aspect normal aspects here ok do you think we'll get back before the break you think mr putin will deliver well it's difficult to say i think the short answer is yes he has to. i think you'll find

a lot to criticize about it but then you know the twenty years i've been covering russia this place is continuously going forward i mean it's never going to dramatically and the p.r. has been awful but it's made continuous progress which is why we have this middle class that are complaining today ok we're going to go to a short break now and after that break we'll continue our discussion on russia's new president's day hard.

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out of prosecutors' about to mind you were talking about the results of the presidential election in russia. you can see it's. ok john i'd like to broaden this out a little bit here we don't have much reaction coming from western capitals about the return of a lot of your putin obviously we saw in media that they weren't very happy about it and governments around the world of pretty much sneered at this election though it's probably the most striking transparent one russia has ever had and it was glad to hear putin that would benefit if with a good clean election in only suffer if there were major regularities what's next now i mean is anybody going to call that amir putin say hey vlad congrats and look forward to seeing you with ga. well there might be a phone call from peking or somewhere like that but indeed you're right in your question to suggest that the really reaction from the western leaders is going to

be pretty tepid we know what their reaction is going to be because they started to get their reaction back in september as soon as putin announced that he was going to run for the presidency and within a nanosecond the warm words that had been directed at medved if the us for years were instantly dropped and russia was once again in the doghouse and since then the coverage and the political comment the comment by political leaders on the russian election has i'm think it's fair to say been systematically negative and sarcastic and condescending every single report that i've seen this morning about the election victory. couples it's with allegations of your or the same allegations of course which were made systematically after december and whatever the truth of those allegations. i don't think the reporters are generally very interested in the truth of the fact is that they stick and since the election in december since the alleged local election december the opposition strategy and the west strategy has

been to make that allegation stick at all costs knowing that putin would be reelected and therefore trying to sabotage his presidency from the very beginning by making these claims and by trying to tarnish his election as having been unfairly gained you know larry unfortunately i think that the great finish up ahead . well i was going to say unfortunately that had been something of a sea change i think once obama was elected so from the end of two thousand and eight to early two thousand and nine the relations were pretty good really from that point of view i'm talking about relations with the west but which by by the means by the way is by no means the whole of russian foreign policy but that's what we tend to talk about but i think we'll now go back to the period before that because it's clear that the west absolutely hates and it wouldn't matter if i got it i one of the things i found very interesting remember i was interviewed on b.b.c. and there was something going on between the united states in there and in russia and i was asked by the correspondent said you know you know putin doesn't really he's very harsh with his words when he talks about foreign policy particularly

united states and i said well it's kind of popular among russians and is modified unlike yeltsin unlike got a bunch of putin actually cares about public opinion at home ok he doesn't care what americans think about him or brits or anybody else he really doesn't care he cares about russians ok i mean is this one of the things that irritates the west because you know a lot of your putin is sensitive to their sensibilities and their red lines and all of that. i'm not sure they even think about it that far i think that what is often missing. i think the words often missing from the western view of putin and from russian politics is the idea that there is a domestic audience to plate in russia as there is in america as there is in europe and the idea that putin when you when he's speaking before the election is speaking in an election campaign context is something that is simply it's not taken into account when you talk when you look at the words that

a barber is using at the moment the meetings that he's having the speech that he gave yesterday for instance to the israel lobby in washington these are pretty election moves to be seen in that context and yet when people talk about it and look at how he behaves and look at what he says they completely disregard the fact that he was in a premier lection situation i saw only one record in connection with the russian stance on syria which said you have to remember that is speaking to voters before an election and that this sort of thing goes down well in russia i think it's it's unfortunate we've got to get used to the fact that there is politics and there is public opinion in russia and it's interesting to me i always tell my russian friends no don't listen to these republicans you know because they're just campaigning you know they're they're like a keeping world leader but what about foreign investors i'd like to have. america

said i mean this should be a shock in the west and so much is putin is playing to an audience he's delivering a message why because he wants them to vote for him this is you know the democratic process in some instances and action why is there with difficulty against putin they hate him i think it's because there's a clash of systems here and in the assumption behind. criticism is that russia is not democratic but what the problem is it's not so much that russia is not democratic it's managed democracy system whereby you've got a transition and the debate that we should be having that we're not even beginning is the west is looking and saying russia's political system is rubbish and discounting people with discounting putin it's not you know they should have the same system as which is full and open democracy but i think the let's take that attitude is maybe naive or at least it's not what happening here what we're talking about is a transition if we accept this economic need for economic transition at

a time what is arguing is that there's a need for a political transition to. this is not taken in a state where the president just returned with ninety seven percent of the vote one hundred percent of the duma. and it's not ukraine either which is but then you know there's the ukrainian it experiment where they did it for political. chaos and it's chaos and war over the overages is clearly going to steal the country back in october and the elections there and i think putin's looking at these these situations and saying that we need a transition there's no point in introducing civil society if we don't have the institutions to ensure the management of the economy afterwards and you know you can argue about the pros and cons of that but no one's even beginning this debate about what he's attempting to do and it's a very interesting debate a change in political system here is unprecedented in history and all the west can do is write your systems rubbish it's not them and so we can meet again and i guess

john the if russia were really to imitate the united states which i have super pacs right. just by i don't really agree that the i don't really agree that the reason the real reason for this bad blood is that russia's electoral system is rubbish i'm not sure if that was what ben wanted to say but i certainly don't agree with it no i think he said and it was really saying it was that's the caricature in the west and i have absolutely zero but i think the truth is the truth is really very uncomfortable indeed and that is that in europe and possibly in america but certainly in europe in western europe democracy is in very evident retreat it is we in the european union who are living in a system of managed democracy although i wouldn't even put the word democracy in that we are after all in an organization where the greek government was overthrown at the very moment when it said it wanted to have a referendum on its bailout plans two countries have been effectively placed in

political administration every treaty that is new that is that every new treaty that is. it is signed is not submitted to referendum for ratification and europe does everything to prevent such referendums we are at the people who are in retreat we're in a negative transition if you like and i think that might be one of the reasons why russia is so hated it's a sort of it's europe's guilty conscience in a sense which is that which is in operation here mary it i think we've had a really interesting discussion here and i think ben has really had a really important point is that you know i've lived here for twelve years and watched evolution here i've seen pendulums move back and forth a little bit tweaking this tweaking now we know that they're going to change the way governors are elected again thresholds for political parties i mean they are thinking about these things here there are people are protesting saying that they want change we see the political elite reacting to this i mean i guess for some

people here pretty good in russia it's the same faces that's the issue that they have a problem with. yes and i think this is one of the judgments maybe that was made in september when you when you need to be if nominated. for the to be the united russia candidate for president again because i think there is going back to the generational issue there is actually a big difference in the background and the way of looking at the world between. you and i think that europeans and americans maybe were happier with the sort of stance and the sort of language that made me tip was you think. and i think that the new generation of russians or at least no one extreme nationalist new generation of russians also felt more comfortable with me to be adrift and they feel with point and that is one of the reasons for the great disappointment in the

way that it expressed itself in protests through the autumn after the parliamentary elections and probably that we'll see later today ok then if i go to you before we end of the program you're in touch with the business community obviously this was interested in this result and happily can you explain the reasons yeah i mean it's stability that's for putin office i mean business not so concerned with you know democracy an expression of. people's desires they want stability they want to continue the economic boom that's been driven by. rising incomes of the consumers they consult them and they want predictability that's going to happen they want to see more reforms and with putin you know as well isn't that in you know we had twelve years and prosperity and seventy four it's another twelve years of prosperity and so i think we're pretty happy nevertheless we are going to be is going to be just as easy this time for is getting more difficult i mean the new

a new economy there's a consensus amongst all the liberals the new economic model is needed it's. i mean that i think the investors on the whole you know provided this person isn't doesn't get violence you know the grains are way too soon which is their stated aim then this is very healthy and this is also russian means for long term prosperity otherwise we're facing the prospect of stagnation and of course no. one knows for. so i think you know and nice gradual transition the business community is very happy and seeing i mean already seeing from direct investment picking up ok john i'm going to give you the last word here what are the next six years going to be like twenty seconds well i think that the biggest challenge is probably the judicial system and you know ben you were talking about foreign investment and the business climate i think that's what the got that's the kind of stability which is the most important it's justice from the judicial system and justice from the local administration and i think those are the two big areas where russia is probably at

its weakest that is the biggest challenge and then of course there are huge international challenges above all the international monetary system which is in chaos and needless to say the middle east so it's an uncertain world but i think that there was not certain well certain world of people and this is when mr putin wants to deal with here many thanks my guest today in paris london and here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember crosstalk. led mission three the cretaceous three purchased free. transfer three per the studio three a

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