Sometimes they come back

The main topic of the issue is the upcoming elections to the State Duma

The government does not yet have a ready-made scenario for elections to the State Duma. There is a whole set of laws that allow stopping unwanted parties and candidates on the distant approaches to parliament. There is already some experience gained during the 2015 regional campaign.

This, of course, is a lot. For example, this is enough to take and remove Vladimir Churov from the CEC. Churov is a man-symbol. Large-scale fraud in the 2011 Duma elections was associated with his name, the demand for his resignation was one of the main slogans of the mass protests of those romantic times. And now, fulfilling this demand with a slight five-year delay, which the demonstrators from Sakharov and Bolotnaya had long forgotten about, the Kremlin seems to be showing that we are strong and self-confident enough to get a comfortable parliament without rewriting the protocols. Churov himself, by the way, told reporters that he was “very pleased” with his upcoming resignation.

But there are also objective difficulties connected with the elections. There is a party in power, United Russia, which so far, in the conditions of the crisis, has nothing to offer voters, except for the primaries. There is the All-Russian People's Front, whose activists can and are already declaring their desire to participate in the primaries or, in addition to the primaries, become single-mandate members, pushing the well-deserved United Russia members. There is, in fact, a crisis, and there is no reason to think that it will not worsen before the elections. And there are single-mandate members who are more difficult to work with than with the lists of systemic parties with whom you have to negotiate, hundreds of campaigns of which are simply physically difficult to control.

There are results of the work of the Duma of the sixth convocation - and these are not only the laws mentioned above. This is also the narrowing of lobbying opportunities and the fall of parliamentary authority. Results that make you wonder why anyone might need a deputy's crust now. However, political technologists, to whom NT turned with this question, are sure that there will be enough willing people, and they will find motives both in the regions and at the federal level. Political technologists are in a great mood - the campaign promises to be hot.

And there is also a long-standing fear - of the very protests, the participants of which demanded Churov's resignation. Then suddenly (for the Kremlin - really suddenly) it turned out that the liberal electorate, deprived of representation in parliament, is capable of indignation. The Kremlin does not want to repeat mistakes, but it has no new solutions, which is why it revives half-forgotten political projects. From the dusty storerooms, the Just Cause party is being pulled out, which was once deftly, like a small factory, squeezed out from Mikhail Prokhorov. Now the party is headed by business ombudsman Boris Titov. From now on, the party is absolutely loyalist, ready to combine freedom-loving rhetoric with ardent approval of all foreign and domestic political successes of Russia (although, as Vladimir Putin stated the other day, without indicating the source of the quote, it is better to avoid dizziness from successes).

And there is Yabloko, a well-deserved party of uncompromising fighters against the problems of the early nineties, ready to make the most unexpected compromises in order to continue the struggle. One has only to beckon them with a chance to get into parliament - and they will rush into battle, branding any enemies of the regime along the way - from Alexei Navalny to Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

But there are simply no other trump cards in the right sleeve of the Kremlin.