Word: putin
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...opposition, this presents a great opportunity. Opposition leaders flew down from Moscow to have their turn at the podium during the late-January protest. Alongside local activists, they called not only for lower taxes, more jobs and a new governor but for an end to Putin's reign. Nemtsov was the most prominent figure to speak. A popular governor of Nizhny Novgorod in the 1990s and a Deputy Prime Minister under President Boris Yeltsin, he took the stage in a bomber jacket and jeans. "Moscow is sucking the money from the regions as if they were its colonies," he said...
Russia's opposition has long been fond of the word de-Putinization, which to those who dream of such things is a different way of saying "progress." It reflects the rather starry-eyed belief that if Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his circle fall from grace, change will come immediately and Russia will morph into Europe. For years, the opposition movement's strategy has been to rub away at Putin's credibility "like drops of water on a cinderblock," as one of its leading figures, Boris Nemtsov, puts it. For most of that time, the impact of their work...
...says, is to organize a rally 10 times the size of Kaliningrad's in the center of the capital. And then what? "Well, after that, we'll have elections, and then we'll see who wins and who loses. But the point is, we have to get rid of Putin. He is dangerous," Nemtsov says. "I think this year is going to be the year of anti-Putin protests...
Surkov, officially Medvedev's deputy chief of staff, said that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had approved the idea of a Russian Silicon Valley after Medvedev came up with it. Surkov said he himself had been assigned to oversee its creation, most likely on the outskirts of Moscow. It is an unusual role for him. Both under Putin's presidency between 2000 and 2008 and now under Medvedev's, Surkov has been widely seen as Russia's éminence grise. He is the author of the "sovereign democracy" theory that underpins Russia's neo-authoritarianism and the engineer of the Kremlin...
...game had changed, and not in China's favor. Beijing had always had a partner in pushing back against the West's desire for tough sanctions against Iran: Moscow. The Russians don't need Tehran's oil and gas, but they have significant economic interests in Iran, and Vladimir Putin, much more than Hu Jintao & Co., had very much been in the business of sticking a thumb in the eye of the U.S. whenever he could (the default position of pretty much any ex-KGB officer worth his salt). (Read "How Iran Might Beat Future Sanctions: The China Card...