if there's any real progress on fighting corruption that's what some of the work we've done recently says that this is where russia can make a big difference in preventing the perception of russia and of corruption in russia over the next few years. all right well thank you very much for joining us live from london there sorry we had to be brief thank you for your input this hour we're going to go straight to our spot my program and we'll have more for you at the top of the hour stay with our team. some of the bonus. to. follow in welcome across dark i'm peter all about the return of lot of mere putin to the russian presidency how did the campaign change russian politics how will russia transform over the next six 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 used to rector of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation in london we have mary to share ski she is the chief editorial writer and columnist at the independent and here in the studio with me is ben eris he is editor in chief of business new europe all right cross talk rules in effect 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 some lessons that putin have to play to the gallery in the way that he hasn't done before i think i think is a good thing yes yes i think the big change is you know up until this election fruiting has been above politics and he hasn't been

a politician is just the president whatever you want to call him however the demonstrations you know he was dictating the paper saying this is important and everybody talked about what i think he chose the difference with this election is that he did the demonstrations and 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 it was just the beginning. ok joe what do you think about that at the beginning of real politics and russia because i mean i wouldn't want to go as far as ben but i do i think there is a dialogue happening here where 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 her all the 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 i'm 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 because 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 he cannot for long continue to present prevent to present himself what is the only way i think there's a good and you don't you think i think that's a good i mean every politician should have to defend their record married 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 violet except. absolutely that's no more politics i mean i agree partly with that 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 cotton has governed or rude the last twelve years. and other people and i think i would agree with them would say that it's. 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 long mark on the way to real politics through this campaign and then you want to jump in there i mean one of the things i think is very interesting here is that there's been an enormous amount of focus on a liberal lot of opposition which fair enough that's what western media likes to cover but one issue i think that is not in problem now 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 to people who study i think you know i mean all of us said in war where it's a process it's evolution you know the russians 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 points 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 both rates going shooting up and they're starting to worry about normal things like property rights government services education pensions and they want to get more say but this is a process i mean i think we can rule out an arab spring change and what we're talking about because the enemy even the people who are protesting you know they want to preserve their prosperity and that's key to them and nobody wants the chaos of a violent regime change indeed they are actually quite happy to keep it in inch. they want him to be more accountable to listen to him so now it becomes very interesting they're going forward is putin has a lot to no avail i mean i mean 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 every even the prudence attractors with a minute before the election he was by far the most popular politician in russia

but you could still having said that you still can't have a slogan to 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 tip of his that's the only thing they're green 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 or something to 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 analysis that the liberal opposition have linsky outlook and so on are put forward as if they were the only people opposing him they are not there yet yesterday is always

a show the biggest opposition party as we know is the communist party ok mary franco you wrote a very interesting article right before the election and you talk 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 one nine hundred ninety s. ok how bad the one 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 who are 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 been 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 and 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 was

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. 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 of the groups the ninety's and the groups to the soviet era groups really didn't have and i think while a lot of people in russians in the political sphere 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 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 undereducated 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. 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 an isolated 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 found at the age of twenty five and i was majority of 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 profession people that have benefited over the last twelve years in timor and out into much yeah you know i mean you know ironically the people protesting and want to go outside and some of the main beneficiaries of all the changes that have happened but this is why this is going to be in a revolution is wrong with this is going to be very civilized and it's a question i mean really cajun engaging the government and the government new thing gage 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 needs with getting the economy back on its feet which is talking about big companies monetize for have you. gone past that point and now it needs to starting again with the people in the small companies and employment and start raising standards of living and securing property rights and dealing with governments of the since you know sort of normal aspect normal aspects

here ok do you think we'll get by before going to the break you think mr putin will deliver well it's difficult to say i think sure 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 gone forward i mean it's never going to dramatically and the p.r. has been awful but he's made continuous progress which is why we have this middle class complaining today. 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 our.

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market finiteness. find out what's really happening to the global economy which makes cars are for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines to come as a report on our key soup. kitchen sisters just some of the big. welcome across the uk i'm bitterly about to my job we're talking about the results of the presidential election in russia since. kicking the slowest so. ok john i'd like to broaden this out a little bit here we don't have much reaction coming from western capitals about. return of law to me or 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 transparent one russia has ever had and it was what amir 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 vladimir putin to say hey vlad congrats a look forward to seeing you with g eight 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 the 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 me did if at the last four 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 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 with allegations of there 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 and the fact is that they stick and since the election in december some solution of the next 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 mary unfortunately i think that the go ahead john. 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 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 main 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 me for that and mary if i go to one of the things i found very interesting i remember i was interviewed on b.b.c. and there was some one thing going on between the united states and i 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 his megaphone unlike yeltsin unlike i've 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 mean 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 play it in in russia as there is in america as there are in europe. 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 obama 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 election moves that had to be seen in that context and yet when people talk about putin and look at how he behaves and look at what he says they completely disregard the fact that he was in a pre-election situation i saw only one report in connection with the russian

stance on syria which said you have to remember that putin 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 there is public opinion in russia it's interesting ben i always tell my russian friends no don't listen to these republicans you know because if you're just campaigning you know that they're like you keep their word later for investors i'd like to have also. american 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 word because he wants them to vote for him this is in a democratic process and so much as an election why is the word servant thickly against him they hate him i think it's because there's a clash of systems here i mean the assumption behind. criticism is that russia is not democratic but what the problem is is not so much that russia is not a record i think 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 miscounting the people we're discussing putin it's not you know we have the same system which is full and open democracy but i think you know state 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 the need for economic transition over time what it is arguing is the need for a political transition to. this is not going to stand 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. which is clearly going to steal the country but i can also bring the elections there and i think putin's looking at these situations and saying that we need a transition there's no point 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 they stipulate about what he's attempting to do and it's a very interesting debate the change in political system here is unprecedented in history and all the west can do is like your system is rubbish it's not our system and so we 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 and i think he was really saying it was the caricature in the west. 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 right 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 opera which is in operation here larry i think it's been 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. this tweaking now we know that they're going to change the way governors are elected again threshold for political parties i mean they are thinking about these things here they are people are protesting in favor of the why change we see the political elite reacting to this i mean i guess for some people who are deeply in russia it's the same faces that's the issue that we have a problem with. yes and i think this is one of the misjudgments maybe that was made in september when. we need to do for 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 big difference in the background and the way of looking at the world between putin and india and i think that europeans and americans maybe were happier

when the sort of stance and the sort of language that mentality it was using. and i think that i think with the new generation of russians or at least known extreme nationalist new generation of russians also felt more comfortable with me 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 will see later today ok then if i go to you before we enter the program you're in touch with the business community obviously this was interested this result in happily can you explain the reasons yeah i mean it's stability that's what you would see in office i mean business not so concerned for me. you know democracy an expression of. people's desires there was realty they want to continue the economic boom that's been driven by. rising incomes of the

consumers and conserve them and they want predictability of what's going to happen they want to see more forms and with putin you know it's as well isn't that in you know we had twelve years of prosperity and some very good foods another twelve years of prosperity and so i think they're pretty happy nevertheless i mean these 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 a new economic model is mean it's. having said that though i think the investors on the whole you know provided this process wasn't doesn't get violence you know that it grinds away in which is their stated aim then this is very healthy and this is also russia needs for long term prosperity otherwise we're facing the prospect of stagnation and of course no you know people that's for it so i think you know and the nice gradual transition the business community is very happy and seeing it and we're already seeing for the right 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's the biggest challenge is probably the judicial system and you know when you're talking about foreign investment and the business climate i think that's what they've 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 the world has not certain when certain world i think this is when mr putin wants to deal with here many thanks to my guest today in paris london here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching just to see you next time and remember crosstalk.

russia would be soo much bryson if you knew about someone from phones to transient it's. nice for instance on t.v. don't come.

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