Nepara

The most circulated photo of recent times is Vladimir Putin and Irina Yarovaya with a bouquet of flowers in their hands – a kind of happy continuation of the long days and nights of slavery in the galleys of their homeland. And if it weren’t for his well-known preferences regarding the female sex and her unfree family status, the thought might even creep in: have they really found each other? Neither give nor take Vladimir Ilyich and Nadezhda Konstantinovna. True, that non-couple was united by an idea, but this one was, rather, political omnivorousness and self-interest, as well as the peculiarities of their biography, the thorny path “from rags to riches.”

His journey began in the Leningrad courtyard. Hers is in Makeevka, Donetsk region. The young security officer, who was missing stars from the sky, turned up at the right moment with a bright figure of the first democratic wave, St. Petersburg mayor Anatoly Sobchak, was noticed, favored by fate and, as they say, taken into action by his superior comrades. The young senior assistant to the prosecutor of the Kamchatka region (she allegedly dreamed of becoming a prosecutor since childhood) first found herself on the federal council of Yabloko. She even managed to study at the Moscow School of Political Studies by Elena Nemirovskaya (this NGO, which gave a start in life to many future regional politicians, was one of the first to be included in the black list of “foreign agents” at the end of 2014, according to the law in the development of which former “student” Yarovaya took an active part). In the first half of the 2000s, she oversaw the Kamchatka branch of the Open Russia Foundation created by Khodorkovsky. And when Yabloko failed to get elected to the Duma (read: move to Moscow), she easily joined United Russia and surfaced in Okhotny Ryad already in the ranks of the party in power.

And, finally, a political triumph: he, having easily parted with the “democratic” past and “mentors”, with failed attempts to become “one of us” in the company of the leaders of the Western world, from the Kremlin brings horror to friends and foes - internal and external. She, having easily betrayed like-minded people of the early 2000s, makes legislators of the last two convocations dance to her tune. Not yet a prosecutor, but already an honored lawyer of Russia (the decree was signed in 2011 by Medvedev, who was put in Putin’s chair), Yarovaya is the author of 115 bills. One might say, the hero of a mad printer. It did not ignore the historical memory of Russians - it initiated a law establishing responsibility for encroaching on the essentially Soviet canon of the Second World War. Together with five fellow United Russia members, in 2012 she introduced a bill to reintroduce liability for libel to the Criminal Code. Her comrades developed a draft law on foreign agents, and especially zealously insisted on larger fines for non-compliance. Well, and the “cherry on the cake” is the “anti-terrorist package” introduced at the end of the work of the Duma of this convocation. This package, in particular, provides for criminal penalties for “failure to inform” and “inducement” to participate in mass riots (and criminal liability under anti-terrorism articles now begins at the age of 14), as well as the obligation of telecom operators to store information about the content of telephone conversations and correspondence of their clients for three years.

Russia today most resembles a black hole - it’s dangerous and uncomfortable next to it, it strives to suck you into its bottomless underworld

The fact that the characters in this photograph found each other seems quite natural to me. Another thing is surprising: how so many smart people played the same game for a week - “master, judge!” Ombudsmen and ombudsmans, representatives of various kinds of unions and councils under the president, my friends, human rights activists, entrepreneurs and politicians - all rushed to Putin shouting about violations of the Constitution, human rights and economic damage from hastily adopted legislation in the absurd hope that he would repeal yet another, both harmful and idiotic law.

As if it is not clear that the honored lawyer Yarovaya, sitting in the State Duma, is not carrying out anyone’s political order, but his, Putin’s! And this order has nothing to do with lawmaking, that is, neither with the law nor with creativity. Even less so with the interests of the country, its citizens, or even the fight against terrorism. It can be briefly formulated something like this: shut them all up! In other words: make sure that everyone is afraid - parents for their teenage children, who will now face punishment for failure to inform. Citizens – for any word on social networks or in electronic correspondence. Entrepreneurs - for the fact that they will be held accountable for non-fulfillment of requirements, which, due to the technical and financial impossibility of fulfilling them, will be applied, as is customary in our country, selectively to “ours” and “others”, “right” and “wrong”. And so on. Because everything that happens in Russia and beyond its borders, all the fuss that has just begun around the Duma election campaign, interests Putin only in relation to his own person.

Constitutional violations? Forget it! The Russian government has “developed” special skills in tinkering with the Constitution to suit itself. And here it is absolutely unimportant who will be the first to approve or sign this or that law - Putin, the Duma, the Federation Council. Rearranging the terms does not change the sum, the result is the same.

Russia today most resembles a black hole - it’s dangerous and uncomfortable next to it, it strives to suck you into its bottomless hell. But inside it’s unsteady, stuffy and dark – you certainly can’t understand it with your mind. And the non-couple in the photo - Putin and Yarovaya with a bouquet of flowers in their hands - is like the embodiment of either absolute evil, or monstrous hypocrisy, or simply the insanity that is growing stronger in the country.

Galina Sidorova – Moscow journalist