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and free media don carty dot com. you can see. the some. of the same. following welcome to cross talk i'm peter lavelle 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. the same you can see the same. cross-talk a new period in russian politics i'm joined by john laughlin in paris he is director of studies at the institute of democracy and cooperation in london we have married a chef ski she is the chief editorial writer and a columnist at the independent and here in the studio with me has been heiress he

is editor in chief of business new europe all right crosstalk rosen a 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 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 and. and had to play a gallery in the way that he hasn't done before i think the beach 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 he's just a president whatever you want to call him however the demonstrations you know he was dictating the debate by saying this is important and then everybody talked about whatever he chose the difference with this election is that he did the demonstrations have pulled him down into the process and then he's lost control of all 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 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 john what do you think about that at the beginning of real politics in russia because i mean i wouldn't want to go as far as bad but i do like that there is a dialogue happening here what 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 that 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 doesn't hell it held a new era because clearly he's been in power in one form or another since the year two thousand or indeed since nine hundred ninety 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 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 him present himself what is the only

thing and i think that's a good thing you know to think i think that's good i mean every politician should have to defend their record marriage of course you see you marry so you know what 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. the last twelve years. other people and i think i would agree with them would say that it's been simply a weakness of the system since the fall of communism that 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 is going to enormous amount of focus on the liberal opposition which fair enough that

western media likes the coverage but one issue i think that it's not been problematic 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 to start thinking i mean all of us have said in war one way or another it's a process it's evolution you know the russians it seems 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 would concern with surviving and today they have a job or career or children birth rates going shooting up there's nothing 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 of springs change and what we're talking about because the i mean 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 it in. but they wanted to be more accountable to listen to him so now it becomes very interesting now going forward is putin has was you know 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 putin to tractors with me before the election he was by far the most popular politician in russia but you can still 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 red it's a rift it's on the lines they 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 in petersburg the main opposition to putin is not liberal at all 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 various yesterday's i was initially the biggest opposition party as we know is the communist party ok mary if i can go to you 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 nine hundred ninety was well they don't remember that ok and maybe their parents haven't been able to convey it 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 being engaging in a 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 it with the bad old days of the ninety's and then there and there are the younger people who was there both of us and who now seem to be looking forward and wanting to engage in politics and who've been facilitated in this by social media by the internet and by all the things that didn't exist before which allow 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 in the groups the ninety's and the 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 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 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 some 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 this is mary made the point i mean you know there has been was driven a quarter of the population in any one of this country's was under the age of twenty five and i was majority not employed then in russia or the inflation and so the unemployment rate isn't twenty you know and this revolution as such is being driven by the middle class middle aged people especially people that have benefited over the last twelve years in timor and out into much you know i mean you know ironically the people protesting on the liberal side and 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 with this is going to be very civilized and it's

a question i'm really cajun engaging the government and the government needs to engage back you know i mean that's the sea change here 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 monitor. and we've. gone past that point and now it needs to start engaging the people in the small companies and employment and start raising standards of living and securing property rights and dealing with governments and since you know it's a normal aspect normal aspects here ok if it were good but before going to the break you think mr putin will deliver well it's difficult to say i think the short answer is yes he has do. i think you'll find a lot to criticize about it but then you know the twenty years i've been covering russia and this place is continuously gone 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 gridlock in your discussion on russia's new president's day. well. science technology innovation all the list i'm elements from around russia we've got the future covered. to be soon which brightened. the sun from steve.

who flew stars on t.v. dot com. and if you still. want to get. back across our computers about your mind you were talking about the results of the presidential election in russia to. kick. start 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 air pollution 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 trite and transparent one russia has ever had and it was wide a mere putin that would benefit if with a good clean election and only suffer if there were major regularities what's next

now i mean is anybody get a call vladimir putin saying hey vlad congrats oh look forward to seeing you in 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 real a reaction from the western leaders is going to be pretty tepid we know what their reaction is going to be because they started to give 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 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 being systematically negative and sarcastic and condescending every single report that i've seen this morning about the election victory. couples it with allegations of fraud 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 since the notion of that was 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 go ahead john finish up go ahead. but 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. mary if i go to one of the things i found

very interesting remember i was interviewed on b.b.c. and there was some one thing 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 both kind of popular among russians in his manner 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 play to in russia as there is in america as there are in

europe and the idea that putin when 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 pretty election moves 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 and

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 we saw my russian friends go don't listen to these republicans you know because if you're just campaigning you know that they're not a keep your word leader for investors i'd like to have. marriages 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 the democratic process and so much as an action why is the with thickly against him i hate him i think it's because there's a clash assistance here i mean the assumption behind. criticism is that russia does not have a critic 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 we discounted what people were discounting putin it's not you know we have the same

systems which is full and open democracy but i think you know it'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 that it's. what putin's arguing is that there's a need for a political transition to. this is not turkmenistan where the president just returned with ninety seven percent of the vote one hundred percent to do with. 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 back in october and the elections there and i think looking at these new 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 the change in political system here is unprecedented in history and all the west can do is like your systems rubbish and system and so we just and i guess john that you know 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 that it was really saying it was the caricature in the west. but i think the truth is the truth is that 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 are 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 operative which is in operation here mary it i think we've had a really interesting discussion here and i think ben has really hit a really important point is that you know i've lived here for twelve 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 threshold for political parties i mean they are thinking about these things here they are people are protesting favorite they want change we see the political elite reacting to this i mean i guess for some people here politically 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 misjudgments maybe that was made in september when you know when you need to be if nominated. for them 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. the way of looking at the world between putin and would be and you and i think that europeans and americans maybe were happier when the sort of stance and the sort of language that made me tip was you think.

and i think that i think the new generation of russians or at least known extreme nationalist new generation of russians also felt more comfortable with me to be your friend 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 for it's in the 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 so they can sell to them and they want predictability that's going to happen they want to see more of forms and with putin you know it's

as well as on the team you know we had twelve years a prosperity and so many look forward to 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 needed it's. having said that i think the investors on the whole you know provided this person doesn't get violence you know that it grinds away uprooting which is their stated aim then this is very healthy and this is also work russia needs for long term prosperity otherwise we're facing the prospect of stagnation and of course never going to go so i think you know and i nice gradual transition the business community is very happy and seeing i mean already seeing for the rest of us and 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 ben 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 that was not certain when certain world people and this is when mr putin wants to deal with here many thanks to my guest today in paris london and here in the studio in place to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. wealthy

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