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you can see. him going to. be. blowing welcome across 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 of the next six years and has a new dialogue started within society about the country's future. you can still see. the 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 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 york all right cross talk rose in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want then i'm going to go to you first here in the studio was this election. game changer how was this election different from

previous elections it was different in the sense that you know it was a lot more than a critic and so much as a person had to play to the 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 it's just the president whatever you want to call him however the demonstrations you know he was dictating the debate by saying this is important and that everybody talked about whatever he chose the difference with this election is that he did the demonstrations and put 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 a beginning that ok john what do you think about that at the beginning of real politics in russia because i mean i would probably go as far as dead but i do like

that there is a dialogue happening here why 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 made an awful lot of these demonstrations although we should never forget that they. in principle represent a fairly small if not tiny 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 at all the 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 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 and he cannot for long continue to present prevent him present himself what is the only way very and i think there's a good thing you know if you think i think that's good i mean every politician should have to defend their record marriage of course you see marriage so you know ali what do you think about that i mean that's that's perfectly fair that's normal

violet except. 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 cotton has governed or rude the last twelve years. 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 landmark on the way to real politics through this campaign where 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 the liberal opposition which fair enough that's what western media likes to cover but one issue i think that is not in trouble enough 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 the people who study i

think you know i mean all of us have said and more where it's a process in its evolution you know the russians 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 through a screen 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 in arab springs change and what we're talking about because 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 hussein inch.

but they want him to be more accountable to listen to him so now it becomes very interesting going forward his food scene has all that you know very many many 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 with media before the election he was by far the most popular politician in russia but you can still keep having said that you still can't have the slogan anyone but putin i mean it's contradictory and it's certainly counterproductive ok when i worry about is that they won't want to engage the new president well when they say that it's a real it's a rift it underlines their weakness doesn't it because 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 sun cycles in moscow or something it is part of 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 opposition to the biggest opposition party as we know is the communist party ok mary franco 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 one nine hundred ninety s. ok how bad in one nine hundred ninety was well they don't remember that ok and maybe they their parents haven't been able to convey it too well because only a lot of 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 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 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 of the groups the ninety's and the groups or the the soviet era groups really didn't have and i think. 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

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 isn't anything to do with the arab spring i think there now and this is mary made the point i mean it you know there is very much driven by a quarter of the population in any one of those countries was under the age of twenty five and a large majority not employed 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 in timor and out into much yeah you know 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 revolutions along with this is going to be very civilised and it's a question i mean really 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 needs with getting the economy back on its feet which is talking about big companies monetize for five years and we've now gone past that point and it needs to start engaging with the people in the small companies and their employment and start raising standards of living and securing property rights and dealing with governments and since you know so normal i suspect normal aspects here ok if it were good but people go to 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 up to criticize about it but then you know the twenty years i've been coming russia 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 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.

you know sometimes you see a story and it seems so sleep you think you understand it and then he lives something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize everything is off. i'm sorry welcome to the big picture. of the. slaves technology innovation hall the list of elements from around russia we've got the future covered. if.

any is eve. please. download the official publication on the phone called touch from the shops to. munch on sea life on the go. video. i'll tease mine comes and says features now in the palm of your.

question on the calm. and. to listen to. the prosecutors' about to mind you were talking about the results of the presidential election in russia. live to take you. live. 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 water near putin obviously we saw in media that they weren't very happy about it and governments around the world have a pretty much sneered at this election though it's probably the most trite and transparent one russia's ever had and it was but a mere 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 well look forward to seeing you a g eight. well there might be a phone call from peking or somewhere like that but indeed you write 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 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 madrid if 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 i don't 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 author 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 than the fact is that they stick and since the election in december since the list of letters 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 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 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 mean by the way is by no means the whole of russian foreign policy but that's what we're going to talk about and i think we'll now go back to the period before that because it's clear that the west absolutely hates getting mary if i get it i 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 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 both kind of popular among the russians and his modified unlike yeltsin unlike got a bunch of putin actually cares about public opinion at home ok he doesn't care if what americans think about him or brits or anybody else he really doesn't care he cares about russians ok i mean this is one of the things that irritates the west because you know vitally important is sensitive to their sensibilities and their red lines and all of that. i'm not sure they even think about it that far you know i think that what is often missing. i think the words often missing from the western view of and from russian politics is the idea that there is a domestic audience to plate in russia as there is in america as there are in

europe. the idea that putin when he 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 word 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 that had to be seen in that context and yet when people talk about hootin 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. 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 we saw my russian friends go don't listen to these republicans you know because it is just campaigning you know they are likely to keep their word later for investors i was talking. about 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 why because he wants them to vote for him this is you know the democratic process in some instances an election why is the with thickly against him they hate him i think it's because there's a clash assistance here i mean the assumption behind. criticism is that russia is not democratic the problem is not so much that russia is not there but 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 we discounted the people we discounting putin it's not you know we have the same

system as was in full and open democracy but i think the united states i think today is maybe naive or at least it's not what happening here what we're talking about a transition if we accept it as economic the need for economic transition over time 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 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 globe which is clearly going to steal the country back in october and elections there but i think it is looking at these two 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 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 night your system is rubbish it's not good at them and so we did it again and i guess john the end 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 so i think he said i think i was really saying it was that's 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 the every new treaty that is a right it is signed it 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 upper it which is in operation here mary i think it's been we've had a really interesting discussion here and i think then is 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 of tweaking mistreating 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 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 particularly 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. we 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 big difference in background. way of looking at the world between putin and and i think that europeans and americans maybe were happier with the sort of starts and the sort of language that maybe it was you think. and i think that i think with

the new generation of russians or at least the norm extreme nationalist new generation of russians also felt more comfortable with middle age if then they feel with putin and that is one of the reasons for the great disappointment and the way that it expressed itself in protests through the autumn after the parliamentary elections and probably that was the later today then if i go to you before we enter the programming you're in touch with the business community obviously what is this was interested this result in happily could you explain the reasons yeah i mean it's stability that's what putin on for business. concerns me with you know democracy an expression of. people's desires there was debility they want to continue the economic boom that's been driven by. rising incomes and consumers and that they can sell to them and they want predictability that's going to happen they want to see more reforms and with putin as well isn't that in you

know we had twelve years of prosperity and so many look forward to another four years of prosperity and so i think we're pretty happy nevertheless we will is it going to be is it going to be just as easy this time for is getting more difficult i mean the new new economy there's a consensus amongst all the liberals and you know me martin is needed it's. having said that though i think the investors on the whole you know provided this process moves and doesn't violence you know that it grinds away at thirteen which is the stated aim then this is very healthy and this is also work russia needs for the long term prosperity otherwise we're facing the prospect of stagnation and of course in the ones that you know that's. so i think you know and i nice gradual transition the business community is very happy and seeing i mean already seeing foreign 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 when you're

talking about foreign investment and the business climate i think that's what the 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 would certainly well certainly world appeal and this is when mr putin wants to deal with here many thanks to my guest today in paris london in here in the studio and thanks to our viewers for watching us here r.t. see you next time and remember. it .

you know how sometimes you see a story and it seems so for like you think you understand it and then you glimpse something else and you hear or see some other part of it and realize that everything you thought you knew you don't know i'm tom harpur welcome to the big picture. download the official anti happily cation on the phone called touch from the i choose apps to. watch on t.v. and life on the go. video on demand on t.v.'s minefield comes and punishes feeds now in the palm of your.