Individual protestors in Russia
 

I was walking down the street and met a number of individual protestors:
(photographs taken with their permission)

They are protesting against the insufficient soverenity of Russia and call for a change of constition via referendum.

p.s. found their manifesto (google translation from Russian):
https://translate.google.ru/translat...-text=&act=url

I would imagine any outcome should it ever be forthcoming would depend largely on the stance Putin takes.

From my understanding they believe that Russia is a colony of western powers and that the Russian Goverment acts on behalf of said western powers. Hence they appear to demand the change in constitution, namely to lift the ban on state ideology and to reinstate that Russian laws take precedence over Russian international agreements.

I think they are just a bunch of amusing urban crazies and they appear to be fairly harmless if deluded.

Didn't the Constitutional Court already say that (and on the merits, AFAIK they used zakon for that part, which does mean statute rather than law)? Or is the new idea that the international agreements should be inferior to the statutes?

What does that mean. More sovereignity of Russia in the world? More sovereignty compared to whom? Within the former borders of the iron curtain? More sovereigny for the people compared to Putin?

From the manifesto:
"The liberation of the Russian Federation from the colonial dependence of the United States by restoring Sovereignty through a referendum on changing the constitution."

WTF? The colonial dependence of Russia.. from the United States??! I thought it were british, french, german and russian people who founded the United States. And then liberated the latter from english dominance. lmao


So in short, Putin has paid a few people to demonstrate, so that russian patriots grant him more power in the next elections. MaRGA! (Make Russia great again (tm))

To that you can add the Irish, Scots and Wales who helped found the United States. Later it was also the poles and Italians.

Well we did send them Steven Seagal...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-0...n-2018/9234204

Russia election: President Vladimir Putin will run in re-election next March

Seems like a fair trade. Seagal is a world champion in the art of bullshi(do) :haha:

Are they wearing tin foil under their hats so that the United States satellites can't read their minds? :hmmm:

See... PR... or BS, as the case may be... "Putin for Supreme Leader for Life!!!" will be the "protesters" next motto... :salute:
A Czar is born! A light, a light, shining far and bright...

You do not get more international reputation or more sovereignty just by changing some text in the constitution.
(Or maybe yes, if you change it to some democratic standards, and live by it. But i guess this is out of the question here.)

The best thing is how it is formulated, how the people "beg" Putin, to "serve" the people of Russia.. lmao.

More or less yes.

From my understanding they are a marginal, horizontal, grass roots movement of urban crazies. Interestingly enough they do not appear to be racially, etc biggoted, unlike the bulk of other hard right organisations.

The whole "colony" aspect is about how they perceive that decisions by Russian Goverment (in the broad sense, ie they think that ruble emission is some sort of conspiracy0 are dictated by western powers (ie USA) and in interest of western powers (ie USA), with the dependence being formally/institutionally cemented in documents like the constitution.

p.s. the danger here is to attribute everything happening in Russia (and globally) to some nefarious plan of Putin, because you are not just demonising the man, you are generating a perverse cult of personality.

Constitution text, in my opinion, is fine with possible need for clarifying the article 15, ie that constitution takes precedence over international agreements and federal laws.

Some interesting polls for the context:

Levada is a -foreighn agent- polling organisation in Russia.

Levada polling on public opinion regarding responsibility for the positive and negative developments:
https://translate.google.ru/translat...-text=&act=url
Some interesting (though not entirely country-wide representative) polling on how the respondents believe Russia should develop:
https://translate.google.ru/translat...hhestva-ogf%2F

The research center of CPR may be also of interest, for example it claims that 32 percent of population would support referendum for extending Putin's term instead of re-electing him.
http://cipkr.ru/