March 26, 2017: Anti-Corruption/Anti-Putin Rallies in 99 Russian Cities

A Brief History

On March 26, 2017, 99 Russian cities saw thousands of protesters objecting to the mass corruption of the Russian kleptocracy led by Vladimir Putin. Polls indicate 67% of the Russian population found Putin responsible for the corruption, and yet in March of 2018 Putin “won reelection” to the Presidency of Russia by an amazing 76% of the vote!

Digging Deeper

Obviously, the Russian vote was a total scam on the people of Russia. Putin jailed his main opponent and kept other serious opponents from running by disallowing their candidacy based on trumped up convictions or possibly killing some of them. After widespread mighty efforts to mess with the American 2016 Presidential election it is not surprising Putin and his thugs would likewise make a mockery of the Russian elections.

The protests were spurred by a lack of government response to a YouTube video, “He Is Not Dimon to You”, an investigative film seen by an estimated 23 million Russians. Government response to the protests was swift and severe, with at least 1000 arrests in Moscow alone. More protests broke out in June 2017, but to no particular avail, as the Putin regime remained and remains firmly in charge.

Meanwhile, in the United States various investigations have found the Russians to have meddled to an enormous extent in the 2016 US elections, and that the Russians continue to search for the means to continue to meddle with US elections and public opinion, especially through the manipulation of public opinion through the illegal use of social media and personal information contained within social media (Facebook). In an unrelated Russian scandal, the Russian government attempted to murder a former Russian spy and his daughter in England through the use of nerve agent, which also sickened British nationals as well as putting the target pair on life support. Topping that stunt off was the murder of another ex-Russian spy in England, this time by choking him to death.

In spite of these egregious international affronts to decency and the rule of law, President Donald Trump not only refused to condemn the Russians and their thuggish tactics but instead actually CONGRATULATED Vladimir Putin on his enormous election “victory,” although widespread ballot box stuffing was recorded all over Russia! Seriously, what is up with that? Trump’s failure to condemn Russia when the entire Western World is acknowledging the wrong doing by Putin’s thugs is highly suspicious, and then Trump compliments this obvious enemy of the American (and Russian) people on top of it! Wow, you really have to wonder just what does Russia have on Trump to control him so completely?

On top of all these egregious violations of moral and international law, we recently found out the Russian hackers have penetrated the United States’ power grid and perhaps other infrastructure with the ability to turn off our electricity and cripple airplane flights at their will. And President Trump has said and done NOTHING about this! Even staunch supporters of President Trump have to be asking why The Donald refuses to defend our country against Russian aggression. Or they should!

Question for students (and subscribers): What do you think about the Russian criminal government? (Or the Russian legitimate peace loving government of the people under the rule of law if you will…) How about the hacking of our voting machines and records, of our power grid, and of our other infrastructure? Do you agree with EVERY SINGLE American intelligence agency that the Russians meddled with our 2016 elections and continue to seek to meddle with the ongoing democratic process in the US? If you do not believe this possibility is the case, please tell us why. Do you think Russian voters legitimately reelected Vladimir Putin, or was the vote a sham? We welcome all comments and opinions on these subjects in the comments section below this article.

(By the way, the Russian penchant for cheating and dirty tricks led to a ban on allowing a Russian team to compete in the 2018 Winter Olympics, although some Russian athletes did compete as individuals.)

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Historical Evidence

For more information, please see…

Browder, Bill. Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice. Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? Simon & Schuster, 2015.

Nance, Malcom. The Plot to Destroy Democracy: How Putin’s Spies Are Winning Control of America and Dismantling the West. Hachette Books, 2018.

Zygar, Mikhail. All the Kremlin’s Men: Inside the Court of Vladimir Putin.  PublicAffairs, 2017.

The featured image in this article, a photograph by Evgeny Feldman of Alexei Navalny arrested during the March protests, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.