The Far East did not come back

Why Khabarovsk went against Moscow

The apolitical residents of Khabarovsk for the first time in their lives took to the streets with demands directed against the federal government. Tens of thousands of people participate in protests, the main street of the city has turned into one stream of demonstrators. The local police and the Russian Guard were eliminated from what is happening and clearly sympathize with the requirements of the townspeople. Moreover, on the side of the protesters and local authorities. So the Khabarovsk residents respond to the arrest of the governor Sergei Furgal.

The reason for what is happening should not be associated with the endless folk love for this representative of the LDPR, who in 2018 won the United Russia election, and who is now accused of organizing custom -made murders of distant “zero” (reasonable question, why only now).

It is rather about endless fatigue and irritation of the Khabarovsk residents from how no one is considered with their opinion. The federal center belongs to the Far East (and is it only to them?) As a fed population that has lost the status of citizens.

Whatever they do with people - whether it is pension reform or the actual abolition of competitive elections, they will be silent and endure. From such axioms come in the Kremlin.

In July 2020, Khabarovsk considers it differently: people went outside for their right to determine who power is here.

Let the bosses who are accused of murders are better than those who simply consider us an empty place, so the desperate people argue.

On the Instagram of the arrested governor, all day on July 11, there was a broadcast from the shares of the Khabarovsk people to his support. The press secretary of Furgal Nadezhda Tomchenko said that for organizing this broadcast she is threatened with a criminal case under an unknown article. So simple informing citizens about what is happening in their city becomes a crime.

Pressure on Tomchenko stands on a par with a new wave of persecution of journalists in Russia. It is clear that the authors of this campaign are striving for the replacement of all conflicts accumulated in society, back to the carpet, plug their mouths to those who are trying to talk about really what is happening in the country.

This is guessed by the tactics of the authorities for the coming years: we have come back and now we will be silent.

According to official figures, during the vote for amendments to the Constitution, 62% of the residents of the Khabarovsk Territory supported this initiative of the authorities. This is one of the lowest indicators throughout the country - less from large regions only in Omsk, Magadan, Kamchatka and Yakutia.

As you know, in the Kremlin this vote was appreciated as the greatest triumph: on such an alleged wave of folk support of the current president, now they simply want to solve all things, be it eliminating objectionable governors or the defeat of the media.

There is no doubt that right now an experienced group of “resolver” is sent to Khabarovsk, ready to pacify the local elites with threats and money. Similar groups in the last governor’s elections pacified Vladivostok, where the local unicorn could not win even in the absence of real competitors, so the CEC simply canceled the voting results. Most likely, a wave of popular anger in the region can be shot down, another thing is that if such a “removal of political deposits” begins in other parts of the country, then the “banking system”, rebuilt by the Kremlin, can burst.

For years, propaganda claims that revolutionaries and foreign spies swing the boat, but in reality, the power becomes the main source of political instability in “Kneps of Russia”, which simply forgot how to reckon with the opinion of the people.