In Moscow's Shadows 258: The Ukraine War and Russia's Khaki Election

Ukraine’s long-range campaign against Russia is no longer just about spectacular refinery fires. When Kyiv pivots towards softer targets like logistics hubs, it can hit morale, prices, and everyday life in ways that pure military targets do not. It is also a reminder of the innovation cycle in the war: Ukraine shifts tactics, Russia adapts, and both sides hunt for the next gap in air defences and the next pressure point that the public cannot ignore. What is the political intent behind these strikes, and how may Moscow respond?

In the second half, I look at the political battlefield ahead of State Duma elections. Putin suddenly tried to present himself as the caring tsar, parties fight for the grey vote, and the only credible liberal option, Yabloko, faces a squeeze. How far will the political technology go, and can a managed election still look credible during a real war?

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Transcript

MG 0:00

More on peace. Oh well. More in politics. What's happening in the military campaign? And then what's in the political battlefield? The electoral campaign back in Russia.

Welcome And What’s Ahead

MG 0:35

Hello, I'm Galiumti. And welcome to my view of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise software company Conductor. So I'm away for one week, just one week, and yet stuff still keeps happening.

Book Update And Patron Support

MG 1:00

And before I go on to the stuff that's happening Russia and Ukraine related, just a quick note that the paperback edition of my book Homo criminalis is now out. My book on how organized crime underpins world history and the emerging global order. And it's worth also noting that Estonian, Spanish, Dutch, French, Italian, and Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese translations are also out, with Japanese, Lithuanian, Romanian, Slovak, and Hungarian editions to come, and indeed Russian, although not actually from Russia itself, but from a company in Israel, which is selling essentially to the Russian diaspora. So no sanctions busting is involved. Anyway, so what I'm going to do is essentially for the first half of the of today's podcast look at a variety of bits and pieces that are connected to the war, and then in the second half, look at politics back in Russia.

The August Curse And Anxiety

MG 2:03

And of course, all this is being done under the shadow of the so-called August curse. There is this notion, after all, that bad things happen in and to Russia every August. And well, obviously, we had the 1991 August coup, the hardliners trying to turn back the clock. 1998 we had the financial crash, 2000 we had the Kursk submarine, and the usual tally of summer wildfires and the like. I confess I'm actually rather sceptical about this notion. If you look for bad things to happen in any month, then you will find something. But the point is this is something that is believed in Russia as elsewhere, at least by some, and it does help contribute to a certain air of trepidation, which clearly has good reasons given quite what's going on, and particularly the war on the warehouses, the obviously attention which has been paid to Ukraine's strikes against the wild berries online marketplace, so-called Russia's Amazon, which have indeed proven highly effective.

Why Hit Warehouses Over Refineries

MG 3:10

In a way, one one shouldn't really be surprised, because after all, these are not military and high-value political targets, therefore they're not especially secured, they're not really built to be able to shrug off drone strikes. But nonetheless, by a sort of constant barrage of operations against these logistics hub, it is creating a situation where while Berries itself, I don't think it's going to collapse, I mean what do I know? But nonetheless, the people who do know the Russian market better suggest that. But on the other hand, it may require a government bailout, which obviously could be expensive. Every ruble that is spent on something else is a rubble that can't be spent on the war effort. And more to the point, again, it's another way of Kyiv trying to bring home to Russians the impact of the war, that war is coming to them. So it's not just about seeing great clouds of black smoke over your cities because of some oil refinery on the outskirts being hit. It's also, well, you might be a small business whose inventory has just gone up in smoke in one of the Wild Berry's warehouses. God sounds a little bit like a tongue twister. And or else you just simply might be an ordinary consumer who just suddenly is no longer going to get the goods that you plan to buy. So yes, this is definitely doing something of impact. That said, one also has to note, first of all, it is diverting effort from the campaign against the oil refineries. Yes, some oil refineries are still being hit, but nonetheless, Ukraine has a finite number of drones and a finite number of drone teams, and clearly it's had to pivot. Now, in part I suspect this is a deliberate intent, because what happens is there's this usual gap. You have Ukrainian innovation and then Russian adaptation. The Russians are, as I mentioned in the past, pretty bad at predicting what may be coming just over the horizon, but not that bad at all in actually responding once a threat materializes. And so this way, having hit oil refineries and the Russians bringing in all sorts of measures to try and protect said refineries, now they move to a different target, essentially to keep the Russians not just guessing but constantly scrambling to keep up. So that may well be part of the reason. I think also it's perhaps a reflection of how Russian improvements in air defences have meant that some of the existing targets, anyway, were just getting a bit a little bit too difficult. I mean, one very sort of specific case in point, the use of the Ukrainian homemade flamingo cruise missiles. Now, it's impressive that they've been able to put this project together, but nonetheless, we have to recognise flamingos are relatively big and slow. Now, for a while they were actually using their capacity to operate along river valleys to stay low and stay undetected. But the Russians got wise to that. And now we have a situation where I believe it's 10 of the last 11 flamingos that were fired against Russia have been shot down. So, you know, on on the you know, it may well be that just simply the Ukrainians are adapting to try and continue to find those windows of opportunity, but of course also adapting to ensure that you have new and unexpected pain for the Russian economy and the Russian population. Again, people can get used to things. So in part it's about sort of creating different stimuli so that they don't get used to it. And given that this is a huge country, there's going to be inevitably massive air defence

Air Defence Adaptation And Drone Limits

MG 6:44

gaps. As we'll come on to in a moment, you know, Moscow, for example, is incredibly well secured, but that comes at the cost of air defences that you could send elsewhere. Now, when it comes to Moscow, uh now the drone bomber, Ukrainian-based OSINT open source intelligence site. Now I can't speak to their absolute accuracy, but nonetheless, again, it seems to be well regarded. Anyway, what it did was it plotted drone strikes, detections, and interceptions in Moscow and Moscow Oblast, Moscow region. Now they had recorded about 1,500, although Moscow Mayor Sebianin says actually it was more than 6,000, 6,225, in fact, drones that were fired towards the Moscow region, so not just Moscow City, in July alone. So nonetheless, a big sample. And based on their sample, well, again, they they rather understate it by saying that the results are disappointing. So 1,400 of the 1,500 drones they identified were intercepted in the first and defense second defensive lines around the region. About a hundred drones reached the third defensive line, which is around the Moscow Ring Road, the Umkad. And only one drone, which they calculated as 0.07%, actually hit inside Moscow itself. Now, again, let's be clear, many of these were probably aimed at targets which are actually outside the city, maybe just outside the city. But nonetheless, it does say something that you need, and this is something that the Russians also discovered, you need to be firing a hell of a lot of drones to be able to be sure of getting enough through enemies' air defences. It's one of the reasons why the Russians are now relying more heavily on ballistic and hypersonic missiles, because with Ukrainian stocks of Patriot interceptors either gone or down to a bare minimum, essentially these things can be almost guaranteed of getting through.

Moscow’s Drone Shield By The Numbers

MG 8:43

So look, it it's a difficult situation. And I wrote about it in the Sunday Times today. Actually, this campaign, it it's it's a high risk strategy. I mean, on the one hand, look, it was also a political campaign aimed at the West. Remember, Ukraine has to keep the West engaged, interested, and optimistic, because it needs the money, the weapon systems, the intelligence sharing and such like. And with a skeptical Trump and a NATO gathering, clearly it was quite a priority for Kyiv to actually show that they had they had cards to use Trump's own idiom. And in that respect it was successful. You even had, although it's since been walked back, Trump saying that Ukraine would be allowed to license produce its own patriot missiles, which has been described elsewhere as a sort of a great asset for Ukraine in the next war, because it would it would take probably a couple of years before you can actually go from such an agreement to actually being able to produce your own patriots. And of course, that presupposes that Russia does not target your factories in the meantime. But nonetheless, again, politically it was successful on that front. And secondly, and Zelensky was pretty open about this, it was part of a campaign to try and compel Russia to end the fighting or at least reach some kind of a deal over perhaps an end to long-range strikes before winter, because that is the big nightmare. The what happens if Ukraine remains undefended? Winter comes along, maybe it's going to be a hard winter. Already two-thirds of Ukraine's electrical generating capacity has been degraded away, and they're not going to be able to fix that in the next couple of months, and Russia will probably once again start hitting them, and maybe other elements of infrastructure such as water supplies, which really could make Ukraine cities pretty much unlivable, despite the potential for using diesel generators

Ukraine’s Political Aims And Risks

MG 10:42

and the like. So there was both a political ambition as regards the West and a political ambition regarding Russia. The problem, and this is what I talk about in the article, and inevitably it generates this problem of people saying, oh, so you think Ukraine shouldn't have done anything, that you know, it's it's Ukraine's fault, whatever Russia does in retaliation. That's clearly not the case. Inevitably, a war is a matter of strike and counter-strike, strategy and counter-strategy. And inevitably, what the Ukrainians do will generate some kind of a response from Russia. And the thing is, we don't really know for sure what that response is going to be. Go back to this issue of clearly there remains this debate within Russia, within the Russian elite, behind the scenes, trying to persuade Putin.

Hawks Versus Pragmatists In Moscow

MG 11:32

You've got the pragmatists who are saying, look, we've reached the point of diminishing returns, with taking serious hits at home, why don't we just simply freeze the conflict now, declare a start to negotiations, but basically hold on to what we've got and end the war. And then the hawks were saying, well, yes, you're right, we can't let this war drag on, but what that means is we need to escalate. We need to impose some kind of a military solution on Ukraine, at the very least, taking those last two fortress cities in the in Donetsk region, Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, and only then can we think about something. But again, we we have to do it from a position of strength. Now, in that context, both sides can, after all, mobilise what's going on to their cause. You know, the pragmatists can say, look at the you know the what the Ukrainians are doing, there's a limit to how we can defend ourselves, and this all has costs. And then at the other hand, you have the hawks who again using it to explain, and to seek to legitimise what they're doing, because there is an element in which, and again, it it it one could argue it makes no sense, it's immoral or whatever, but nonetheless, Russians are now experiencing greater numbers of civilian casualties. Still not a patch on what the Ukrainians are suffering, but nonetheless, such is the nature of this war, when you start hitting logistical hubs and the like, you're more likely to be to be killing civilians. And that is generating a degree of anger. So although the polling, insofar as one can trust it, seems to show a greater proportion of Russians not thinking the war is going well, not necessarily thinking it's going badly, but just simply having their confidence shaken, but also wanting early negotiations. But on the other hand, the minority who are opposed to that are becoming, I suppose one could use the word radicalized, but more strident and saying, actually, no, this is why we really need to hit the Ukrainians, we need to avenge our dead civilians and the like. And you know, what happens is you have a few particular cases, in which case there was a bus that was hit by Ukrainian drones, and then also an attack, well, a s a strike by a drone on a beach, which killed seven, which was almost certainly not actually intentional. It looks as if the drone was either hit or spoofed by Russian air defences and therefore crashed out of control, tragically. But nonetheless, these things get hyped up as kind of case studies poster children for the whole Ukrainians need to be taught a lesson kind of narrative. So, you know, it it still could go either way. And in that context, I mean it's worth noting that we had this clearly strategically leaked US intelligence report in the Wall Street Journal saying that in fact Russia is now more likely to make some kind of a sort of a move against NATO. Now, take away from the headline, and again, in case people haven't worked out, I have a bit of a beer in my bonnet about headlines at the moment. But anyway, if one looks at the actual report, there's less there than meets the eye. It just simply says that the risks of some kind of direct incursion are greater but still very low. So in other words, it doesn't actually think we're going to see Russian troops in NATO territory or anything like that, but rather things like cyber attacks. And well I must admit, I think that uh never mind my words, I think it was put best on X by Joshua Hominsky, who's the senior vice president for national security and intelligence, not a bad title, at the Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, who said, quote, Russia could challenge NATO at any point between this autumn and twenty twenty nine is less a warning than a statement of fact. It has the capacity and the strategic intent, sure, but sweeping statements of an incursion to a cyber attack already happening aren't helpful. So yeah, I mean actually there there there isn't really much to it, except just saying that there's now there is now a concern that the more Putin feels pushed into a corner, the greater the danger. And again, this is not an argument for not putting him into a corner necessarily, but there's the greater the danger that instead of thinking, let's call it quits, he might think I have to escalate. And that's why this debate continues.

Sabyanin Warns Against War Economy

MG 15:50

And in that context, I just go back to Moscow Mayor Sabyanin, because he gave an interesting comment, an intervention into this debate, really, in a lengthy interview with TASS, in which he was warning against a full mobilization of the economy. What did he say? He said, We keep hearing talk about the need to mobilize the entire economy, to redirect it toward war and so on. But a modern economy is built differently. If there's no economy a peaceful life itself, there will be no taxes, no income for the population. The political situation will be completely different, and then we won't achieve success in the war either. To kill life, to kill the civilian economy is to kill the country itself. Now this is actually quite quite strong words, I mean, and ostensibly this is as a response to one Andrey Kaljesnik, who's a pretty obscure united Russia deputy in the State Duma from Kaliningrad, who again, and you always get you get a steady toll of these blowhart statements. Anyway, he said that Russia shift needed to shift the economy onto a war footing and begin normal military operations. In other words, not a special military operation, not a limited war, but a full scale war. The point is, as I say, we're getting these statements periodically from people who are hoping that they're going to get their column inch. Um but Sabyanin's operating on a rather different level. He doesn't need to respond to someone like Klyesnik. He's not talking to some blowhard minor deputy who, incidentally in 2023, was forced to repay 369 million rubles. That's 3.35 million pounds or about four and a half million dollars for illegally retained shares. So you know, it gives an idea of the sort of person who is calling for this full mobilization. Instead, he's using this almost as an excuse, an opportunity, to make his the technocrats, point against the hawks. And actually by saying, look, mobilization of the economy, which would be necessary for a full mobilization of the armed might, actually would would end the war, would lose the war, would destroy the country. So there is still a debate going on. I am a little bit pessimistic. I feel at the moment that Putin may be more leaning towards the Hawks point of view. We may yet see some kind of a mobilization wave, but it's not a done deal. Frankly, this is with Putin' Putin, Putin, it's never a done deal until it happens. He can always change his mind at the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute. So that's why the debate is still going on. There's one decider and everyone is just trying to influence him without wanting to make it look as if they're talking to him. What else has been

Assassination Attempt And Command Shakeups

MG 18:36

going on? Oh yes, there was the assassination attempt on well what seemed almost certainly was Colonel General Chaiko, the newly promoted commander of the aerospace forces. And one can pr only presume, frankly, that it was a Ukrainian operation. It wouldn't be the first, and I doubt it's going to be the last. There he was at this sort of meant to be secret and highly secure party for his 55th birthday. Courier comes along with what's ostensibly a gift. The Federal Protection Service officers doing security are suspicious. They want to see inside the package, and at that point it is remotely detonated. Presumably, some someone had eyes on the situation and a remote control. The courier dies, so too apparently are Chaiko's daughter and son-in-law, and seems to be also another general as well as the FSO officer. But Chaiko himself seems to have survived with maybe minor injuries. Now, look, at the best of times, Chaiko does not have the reputation for being a merciful soul. He was associated with the deadly bombing campaigns against civilian infrastructure and indeed civilian targets directly around Idlib in Syria. And then also in 2022, maybe this is a man who is actually a ground forces commander. He was responsible for ordering the violent zachistka operations, clearing or filtration, which resulted in the civilian executions, well, murders, and torture in Bucha. So definitely someone who has his arms coated in blood up to the shoulders. But that was when he didn't have personal access to grind. So he may well be out for blood now, and I wonder if he's advocating more air attacks on Ukrainian cities and the like. We'll have to wait and see. But obviously, this was an attempt at a shall we say a rather kinetic restructuring

Russia’s New Unmanned Systems Commander

MG 20:37

of the aerospace command. We've also had a reshuffle within the Russian High Command. I'm not going to go through the details except for one. I think it's quite interesting. We have a new commander for the new unmanned systems troops, the VBS. And this is one Colonel General Denis Lyamin. Now he replaced Yuri Vagamov, who, although he had been granted a brevet rank of lieutenant colonel, Vagamov was not a career soldier. He was an entrepreneur. He'd been an advisor to Deputy Minister of Defence for Armaments, Alexei Krivoruchka. And he was essentially involved in setting the VBS up in 2025. But now, as it gets closer to being a genuinely operational command, which will essentially bring together not every single drone unit, because obviously every single field command, every brigade, every every regiment, every company, and so forth has its own drone forces now. But certainly all the kind of operational level units. Now that it's time for it to go operational, it was time for it to have a military commander. And Yao Min's quite an interesting choice. He's just 47 years old, you know, which is young for a colonel general, definitely regarded as one of this rising generation of officers, able to be both practical commander. And to a degree, military intellectuals. He has been involved in the invasion of Ukraine since the very start. Then in 2023, he was commanding the 58th Guards Combined Arms Army. And since then he was chief of staff for the Central Military District, which is running one of the main sort of groups of forces within Ukraine. Now, a little while back, I carried out a prosopographical survey of high-flying senior officers. So, in other words, a biographical study looking at trends across the cohort and what we could identify. Anyway, what were the markers that tended to suggest that this is someone who's definitely picked for or likely to head to the top? And within this senior officer cohort, the average age of promotion to the rank of Colonel General is 53.6 years. And the mean is 54. So at 47, Yamin is definitely a high flyer. In fact, he's only really matched by General Mudovichov, who is the current commander of the ground forces. And one could argue the front runner to become the next chief of the general staff, if and when Putin ever gets rid of his beloved Garasimov. Likewise, he also has Yamin also has the Order of Military Merit. Now, which is one of the higher levels of various medals issued. It's not Hero of the Russian Federation, which is the one that gets all the attention. But the thing is about the Hero of the Russian Federation is that it is actually quite often given really for political reasons. And you actually have non-fighters like former Security Council Secretary Nikolai Pathrushev and FSB Director Aleksandr Bortnikov have got, you know, hero of the Russian Federation. Order of military merit is definitely for a fighting officer. And the interesting thing is that 68% of the f of the cohort that I studied had this order. And again, you know, talking to people inside the system, the idea is that this is definitely the medal that goes to the real warrior generals. And the real stars get theirs before their 40th birthday. Now, I haven't been able to quite pin down when Lyamin got his, but he certainly seems to have had it by 2023. So, you know, he's pretty much in that ballpark too. So I think generally the VBS will be something to watch, and we'll have to see whether when it comes into full operational reality, it really does, as is intended, galvanize Russia's use of drones on a both battlefield and operational strategic level. But also I think Lyamin is something that someone whom we ought to be watching too. Anyway, that's a quick roundup of Matters Marshall. Let's have a break and then let's move on to the, in some ways, just as vicious but rather less bloody political battlefield.

Sponsor Break And How To Support

MG 24:58

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Elections Near As Putin Turns Domestic

MG 25:45

Okay, so it's about six weeks before the elections to the State Duma and various other elections too, but those are the primary ones. And we definitely are seeing that we're getting into more of an election season. And part of that is that Putin is a lot more visible than he has been in the past. And in particular, he's talking much more about bread and butter issues. Otherwise, you know, generally speaking, otherwise he just talks about broadly philosophical historical issues or the war. But no, now he's talking much more about issues that really affect ordinary Russians. There was his intervention very clearly putting pressure on central bank chair Elvira Nabulina to cut the base rate, which he did, I mean, only just by 25 basis points, in other words, by 0.25% down to 14%. But still, it was a symbolic move, symbolic both in terms of the direction of travel, despite the fact that inflation, especially because of the wild berries attacks, is now likely to be rising, but also symbolic in that it shows that Putin is still the boss and that he is aware of the concerns of ordinary Russians, mortgage holders, businesses, and the like. And we also had a decree on the monitoring of food price increases, meant to identify where there's unfair, cartilized or monopolized pricing. The impact is likely to be absolutely negligible. But again, symbolically, it's meant to say Putin is aware of your pain and the good Tsar is looking out for you. So that's part of it. And although obviously Putin isn't standing for these elections, given the degree to which United Russia is explicitly the pro-Putin party, it's all connected to that. What else is going on? Well, Commissant recently cited polling showing that United Russia is at around 50%. We'll have to wait and see. I'll come to numbers in a moment. But the interesting thing is that the Communist Party is probably at second place. There's always this struggle between the Communists and the Liberal Democrats for who gets second place. Then also new people under just Russia should beat the 5% threshold. Various other parties, including Jablaka, the Liberal Party, which I'll come to in a moment, well, they're much less likely to do so.

Ballot Ordering And Pensioner Politics

MG 28:08

We had the supposedly random drawing of the order in which the parties will be put on the ballot paper. Now, again, this is meant to be an entirely random process and it might sound trivial, but in fact, there are locations on the list which have been regarded as essentially advantageous. Essentially, you want to be either the head of the list, the number one, or at the very end. Then you are more likely to be noticed, you're more likely to get votes. Suggestions were in uh Niesebisma Gazetta, I think it was, that this could even be worth 10% of the vote. That 10% of people essentially make their final decision based on location. I think that sounds a little bit implausibly high, but but what do I know? But nonetheless, it clearly does matter. So even if it's just a percentile point or so, then actually being in pole position is significant, especially if you're one of the smaller parties who need to get to that 5% threshold. Well, anyway, lo and behold, for the first time in ages, who is at the top of the list? It's United Russia. They're clearly pulling out all the stops just to make sure that they can squeeze out whatever benefits and advantages they can for United Russia. In the second place, though, interestingly, we had the Liberal Jablka Party. Now, as I'm going to discuss in a moment, there is a clear decision by the political technologists and the presidential administration that Yabloka is going to do badly. But symbolically, politically, it has to do so, and it probably won't even get any actual Duma delegates. So, in some ways, actually, by putting a what we could call a no-hoper party in at second place, they're blocking the second best position. They're denying it to anyone else. Then, in third place, the Liberal Democrats. At the very bottom, the New People Party, which is this uh, in some ways a spoiler party. It's meant to be the kind of, hey, we're young, we're hip, we're entrepreneurs, we we like the internet. Um, not really much of uh articulated policies beyond that, but again, intended to try and siphon off some of the potential support for the more liberal parties. And the Communist Party, which is clearly the most serious challenger to United Russia, is in the most disadvantageous position right in the middle. So again, you know, we can expect none of the various dark arts of political technology not to be used. And in particular, this matters at the moment because there is there is a battle for the pensioners. Russia's got about 40.5 million pensioners, which is something like 28% of the total electorate, and they tend to, as is often the case within real democracies, be more likely to vote. And in particular, we have the communists, the liberal democrats, and a just Russia all struggling to try and secure the largest proportion of those. Now, on the whole, in the past it's been the communists who have tended to scoop the pool. But this is something I covered in the most recent Gavarit Moskvar press review for paying patrons, just to let you know, there's all those benefits. Anyway, in that Nizovisima Gazeta cited this pundit, Konstantin Kalachev, who essentially divided the pensioner electorate into three separate cohorts. There's the ones who are critical of the government and looking for someone credible to vote for. And that essentially is tends to be where the communists go. Then there are those nostalgic for the USSR, and these are more likely to be split between the just Russia and the Communist Party. And then there are those who you might say are essentially pro-government, who really feel they should vote, but for whatever reason don't feel that they can vote for United Russia. And this is actually where the Liberal Democrats are scoring, because whereas the old leader, old lunatic Ziranovsky, was more often likely to be critical of the government, at least rhetorically, even though he always voted the way he was meant to vote, nonetheless, under his successor, the rather less colourful Leonid Slutsky, really it has kind of tried to reprofile itself as the second party of power. So kind of United Russia's understudy. So essentially this is the thing. If you're nostalgic for the USSR, you're quite possibly going to be communist. If you're opposed to the government, you could again quite possibly a communist, as long as you're not too opposed. If you're thinking it's all about justice and so forth, you might well go for a just Russia. If you are essentially a mainstreamer, but for whatever reason don't want to go for United Russia, Liberal Democrats.

Squeezing Yabloko With Lawfare And Cyber

MG 32:48

Poor Jablka, meanwhile, is really being squeezed. We first of all have got a series of calls for it essentially to be investigated and indeed excluded from the ballot. We had a just Russia's Mironov calling for an investigation of its position over the war. Then you had the LDPR's Slutsky wearing a rather tragic pseudo-military jacket, I must say, jumping on the bandwagon, calling it for it to be designated an undesirable organization, because he said its slogan, which is for peace and freedom, fairly obviously about the war. He said it cannot be called peace, but rather the betrayal of Russia, the Russian world and Russian civilization. Just think of that. All of Russian civilization is apparently betrayed by calling for peace and freedom. Make of that what you want. Now we have the ultranationalist Rodina Party filing a suit with the Supreme Court to actually have Jablka disqualified from the elections. And I don't know if it's going to happen. I think they're more likely to allow it to run so that they can maintain this tissue-thin veneer of legitimacy. But nonetheless, I think this is definitely a series of warning shots and attempts to basically portray Yablka and by extension those who vote for Yablaka as being unpatriotic. And indeed, I mean Yabloka's leadership has had publicly to dissociate itself from various emigre politicians, including Yulia Navalnaya, Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Karamurza, Lubov Sobol, I mean, all of the sort of luminaries of what one might call the non-Kodakovsky bloc um liberal emigres, who very much have endorsed Yabloka. And party chairman Nikolai Rybakov actually had to write on telegram. We consider it necessary to state the Yabloka Party categorically does not have foreign sources of funding, does not maintain any relations with organizations recognized as undesirable in the Russian Federation, and does not consider statements, appeals, or events conducted by anyone abroad to be part of its election campaign. I mean, this is after all not an idle concern. I mean, twelve Yabloka members have already been charged with various criminal offences, of whom five have been convicted, and the rest are in pretrial detention. And that includes Lev Schklosberg, the party's deputy chairman, who's been charged with multiple instances of discrediting the military, i.e., saying the truth about what's happening in Ukraine. And Rybakov himself, I mean, he's party chairman, but he's actually barred from standing for the State Duma because he has a conviction for displaying extremist symbols, which again, you know, these trumped up charges matter. So we're going to see more exclusion of candidates, and particularly Jablaka. We're also noting that Jablaka actually has been hit by cyber attacks. They launched this online platform to gain funds for their election campaign, for the advertising and everything else. A couple of days they actually had quite a bit of success. Then suddenly they were hit by a series of DDOS attacks, essentially attempts to try and gum up their system with all sorts of spurious queries and inputs. This is not the kind of cyber attack which a criminal would use to try and gain money from them. This is just basically cyber sabotage. So again, it's clear that there are people who don't want it to succeed. Because after all, it is the only anti-war party out there. And it's the only one of the liberal parties, the genuinely liberal parties, that has any hope of hitting that 5% hurdle. Again, I don't think they will be able to reach and cross it, but nonetheless, if there's anyone, it would be them. Now, again, going back to Sabianin, um, in his interview with TAS, apart from warning about against a full mobilization, it raises his interesting paradox, after all, that he's implicitly criticizing some people, people who regard themselves as ultra patriots, but he's also the lead figure on the candidate list for United Russia. So he's one of the locomotives, the people who are meant to be dragging United Russia forward. He's demonstrating, though, that he's very much his own man. And in part, you inevitably have the um concerns about the fact that this is some deep, complex political game. The journalist Brian MacDonald noted on X that the pundit Andrei Proshakov claims that the Kremlin is actually deliberately recasting Sabyanin as a moderate, peace-minded figure ahead of the autumn election campaign to pull anti-war and more liberal-minded voters away from Jablaka by presenting Sabyanin as a kind of establishment pacifist. Now, like Macdonald, I think this is a bit of a stretch. Yes, I mean, maybe sometimes it's a mis it's a mistake to underestimate how far Kiryenka and his team are willing to be too clever for their own good. But nonetheless, I think it's also worth noting that really from the beginning of the war, Sabyanin has done whatever he can within the very, very limited confines of being an establishment politician, to dissociate himself from the war. Yes, he has put money into supporting volunteer units. Moscow does provide subsidies for rebuilding Ukrainian cities that have been conquered. Yes, occasionally he turns up at some kind of a Zed rally, but he does not prance around wearing a camouflage jacket with Zed uh patches, he doesn't come out with the kind of inflammatory rhetoric that you hear from so many other sides. And look, yes, this is in part reflecting that Moscow generally is a little bit more liberal than many other places, but I think it's also that he is essentially a pragmatic technocrat. And this war is bad for management and it's bad for business. So I think in this respect, actually it shows that even within United Russia, you actually have a whole variety of strands of opinion, just as you know, back in the day you had

St Petersburg Dirty Tricks And Exclusions

MG 39:03

within the old Soviet Communist Party. But if that's how Moscow is being pitched, St. Petersburg, by contrast, is emerging, and certainly not for the first time, as something of the Dirty Tricks capital. Now there, I mean, Yablka has already been excluded from local races in several sort of, again, small scale things. You've got at least 13 Yablka single mandate candidates, as well as eight Just Russia members and six candidates each from new people in the Greens, and at least four communists, who actually have been denied registration. It's funny how difficult it seems to be to get registered if you're not United Russia and you're in St. Petersburg. Because incidentally, it's worth noting that United Russia candidates have had no problem getting registered. Indeed, actually, a Just Russia leader Sergey Mironov complained of its candidates being excluded, including particularly some special military operation veterans. Now, again, I can't help but wonder if it's because United Russia actually wants to try to monopolize that. It wants to present itself as the party that looks after and elevates the veterans of the war. And it really doesn't want just Russia stealing its thunder. Again, maybe here I'm being too clever for my own good. And more to the point, look, all of this reflects the fact that St. Petersburg Governor Alexander Bjeglov is clearly looking to curry favour with Putin, who obviously takes a disproportionate interest in how his own hometown votes. It would be deeply embarrassing if St. Petersburg recorded a particularly low result for United Russia. But also, you know, Sabyanin is basically, I think, in a pretty much rock solid position in Moscow. Beglov continues to be rather less sure footed, rather more prone to actually alienate different interest groups, and therefore in some ways he has to work harder to keep Putin happy. And unfortunately what that means is a lot of dubious tactics. Now overall, I would say that it is a messier campaign than usual. And perhaps that's inevitable considering the situation, but it certainly must be uncomfortable for you know, shed a tear for Kiryenka and his boys. Are they still required to give, as is generally assumed, United Russia a vote share of over 50%? Now last time in 2021, it was 49.82%, down from 54.2% in 2016. Now clearly, when you have a multi-party election, 49.82% is still perfectly enough to give you a stonking representation within the state Duma. But is that going to be good enough this time round? So on the one hand, look, it's a lot easier with the new model of three days voting, but also online voting. Online voting is much, much easier to rig, quite frankly. But on the other hand, look, these elections, what are these elections for? Are they about shaping the future of Russia? Of course not. They are legitimating rituals. But for that to work, they also have to be at least moderately credible. And the more the gap widens between the real results and those that are elected, then actually the greater risk that they will fail. They will be discredited, and if anything, they will actually make people more skeptical about the authority of the regime, more willing to believe that their own discontent is actually mirrored by the population, rather than feeling, oh, I'm an outlier, I better keep my views to myself. And indeed, these could also backfire dramatically if one thinks of the Balotnya protests, biggest protests in post-Soviet times. I mean, again, they were essentially triggered by a sense of the presidency, but also specifically Duma elections being stolen. Now, obviously, we're in a very different political environment now. It's going to be a lot harder to have any kind of protests without the riot police storming in at an early stage. But still, it does emphasize this point that times are hard. On the one hand, the Kremlin wants to be able to at least claim that it still has a massive and ideally growing mandate, but actually claiming that is going to be all the more implausible. And what that means is it's having to decide how far it leans on all these various dubious tactics in order to try and, should I say, pre-rig the election, so that when it comes to the on the day, or the days rather, they they have to do the least necessary level of manipulation of the results.

Legitimacy Versus Rigging And What Next

MG 43:41

It's a difficult balance, and again, as I say, I don't think we should necessarily feel all that sorry for them. But nonetheless, we have to recognize that it does mean that even managing a political system like this can actually be a complex and dangerous art. And it's another reason why war and politics are intertwining. I mean, yes, you have the campaigns which might be spun to try and win that sense of, well, you know, we need to all pool together in order to protect our people and our motherland, or it might just simply be people are thinking, hang on, this war should be over, why isn't Putin ending it? And when it comes down to it, you know, we got six weeks. I don't think there is any chance that Russia will be able to declare some great new victory, a genuine one anyway. It's it's not going to be able to impose its terms on Kyiv in the next six weeks. It's not going to be able to take Slavyansk and Kramatorsk in the next six weeks. And well, if I'm wrong, by all means call me out, but I I feel fairly confident of that one. But on the other hand, the next six weeks does offer the chance for real reversals. About, let's say, if for some reason wild berries does collapse. Again, I think it's unlikely, but more to the point it'll it'll keeping it propped up may cost the government a lot of money. Or maybe the Ukrainians have yet another, I'm sure they're planning on it, another surprise up their sleeves, some new operation spider web drone attack on airbases, or pivoting to, I don't know, railway networks, or something else that again just gives that impression that this war is not going the way Putin wanted, and more to the point that Putin is not in control of the situation. Oh, and by the way, if you just heard a little musical interlude in the backdrop, it's just simply because the uh very nice little seaside town in which I live is currently going having its uh folk week, in which, amongst others, you have, well, as I experience suddenly a random attack of Morris dancers walking past my open window. And if people don't know this particular quaint English folk dancing ritual, it involves people with lots of little bells attached to their clothing. Anyway, so that explains that. But I digress. So as I say, I think there's much more chances for nasty surprises for the Kremlin than pleasant ones in the next six weeks. But hey, we will continue to watch it and see what happens. In the meantime, I'm back and thanks for listening.

Final Thoughts And Farewell

MG 46:23

Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. You can follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.