December 11, 2010, 17:03 Politics

With the brains of babies

"Gazeta.Ru"

“Train your brains and muscles,” - this is how the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov, instructed representatives of the youth organizations “Nashi”, “Young Russia”, “Young Guard”, “Steel” and “Local” for the upcoming parliamentary and presidential elections. The meeting took place on Wednesday, December 8, wrote MGER political council member Andrei Tatarinov in his microblog, but Surkov’s official quotes from the meeting were distributed by news agencies only on Saturday.

A Kremlin official said that Kremlin youth organizations have been under increasing attack recently, mainly because they are an important element of the political system. “However, the opponents (all those who are financed by foreign centers and seek to destroy our democratic institutions) know that as long as you exist, they will not pass,” Surkov said at the meeting. “Get ready for the elections - train your brains and muscles. You can always count on our support,” he said, addressing the crowd.

“And to complete this job, we need an election victory. The elections should be won by Medvedev, Putin and United Russia,” Surkov said. The politician did not mention which of the tandem should win the presidential election.

During the meeting, Wikileaks publications were also discussed . “We have witnessed the hypocrisy of some Western countries,” the Interfax agency quoted Surkov as saying. “While at the NATO summit in Lisbon there were assurances about partnership and the absence of any threat to our country from the alliance, in the same days plans were approved for the military protection of the Baltic countries from possible aggression from Russia,” he explained. thought official. “This hypocrisy also manifests itself in politics. Funding continues for the radical opposition, designed to destroy our democratic institutions,” added the first deputy head of the Kremlin administration.

However, the agency’s message was later canceled. RIA Novosti quoted a statement about the West from the words of “one of the meeting participants”: “As one of the meeting participants said, while at the NATO summit in Lisbon there were assurances about partnership and the absence of any threat to Russia from the alliance, in the same days, plans were approved for the military defense of the Baltic countries from possible aggression from the Russian Federation. Surkov said that Russia is interested in cooperation with Western countries: this is important for the purposes of Russian modernization,” the report says.

In addition to issues of domestic and foreign policy, youth movements discussed problems in their own organizations with a high-ranking official. “We met with Surkov. We talked about #mgeRevolution, we understood each other!;-),” wrote “Young Guard” Tatarinov on his Twitter, referring to the schismatic movement within the MGER that formed recently.

On Saturday, it became known that US Senator John McCain said that the Barack Obama administration should curtail its participation in the US-Russian Civil Society working group. As The Washington Post reported, speaking on Friday at the Johns Hopkins Institute in Washington, McCain called a serious argument against the group the fact that the co-chairman on the Russian side is “one of Putin’s closest allies and ideologists” (the Russian co-chairman in the group is Surkov ).