Transcript:
The Americans, the world's self-styled greatest democracy, are in a real tizz over who should be the candidates for president when George W. vacates the White House. But across the globe in that fledgling, some would say dodgy democracy of Russia, quite unlike the crazy 3-ring circus going on in the US, who will succeed the unshrinking Vladimir Putin in a few weeks time is virtually a foregone conclusion. In the new Russia, as Dateline's Nick Lazaredes discovered, for the apparatchiks in the Kremlin a few things might have changed in the now defunct Soviet Union but others, you'd have to say, remain disturbingly the same.
REPORTER: Nick Lazaredes
RAYA SHAFIGINA (Translation): Hello. My name is Raya. I am 72 years old. I am an old granny already. I have a lot of grandchildren. Please come in and have a look.
Like tens of millions of other pensioners in Russia, Raya Shafigina is struggling to get through another winter. Her pension barely covers rent and utilities, leaving her around a dollar a day to spend on food.
RAYA SHAFIGINA (Translation): What do I have? Here are some cookies and I’ve oven dried some bread. They treated me with an apple yesterday. It's getting bad already.
Raya lives here, in Chelyabinsk, a small industrial city located just east of the Ural mountains. Official statistics put nearly 1 in 5 Russians below the poverty line, and rising food prices are hurting many more.
RAYA SHAFIGINA (Translation): It's all expensive here, so we buy only the bare necessities. The sausage is 160 roubles per kilogram, so I can't buy it.
But even though she's barely surviving amid Russia's new dog-eat-dog capitalism, Raya and others like her have nothing but praise for their President, Vladimir Putin. She says he's saved Russia after the chaos of Boris Yeltsin's rule.
RAYA SHAFIGINA (Translation): In any case, he introduced order here. Although our pensions are small, but we get them on time. We wanted…all the grannies here were saying “If only Putin agreed to stay... we’d vote him in. Let him work, he has done a good job.
While the firm-handed reign of Vladimir Putin is coming to an end, his influence is not. He has endorsed this man, Dmitry Medvedev, as his preferred successor while Putin himself plans to become prime minister. And by all accounts, it's a happy arrangement.
STANISLAV BELKOVSKY: The power for the past eight years has been a burden for Mr Putin. Sometimes hardly bearable, almost unbearable burden. And that's why I think the happiest day in Mr Putin's life will be the Dmitri Medvedev new president's inauguration day.
To find out more about Putin's plans for a smooth transition of power, I came to Moscow to meet Stanislav Belkovsky, a well-known Kremlin analyst. Like other Kremlinologists he believes that Putin and Medvedev have struck a deal similar to the one Putin made with Yeltsin eight years ago, a deal based on trust alone.
REPORTER: Mr Putin actually has no way of controlling Medvedev, technically.
STANISLAV BELKOVSKY: Yes, yes of course. Putin should hope on Medvedev's willingness and readiness to keep some obligations towards Putin just as Putin kept his obligations towards Yeltsin. But certainly it does not mean that Mr Putin would keep control over the power system.
What is certain is that Putin and Medvedev are leaving no room for opposition parties. In December's parliamentary elections, new electoral rules and a tightly controlled media saw truly independent parties decimated. Not a single opposition figure was successful. By the start of this year, out of five independent presidential candidates, only one was left. In mid-January, I joined Mikhail Kasyanov in the city of Samara on the Volga River as he toured the regions in search of support.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, (Translation): On March 2, we citizens of Russia, have to make our choice.
Kasyanov is forced to hold his meetings outdoors because local officials refuse him access to indoor venues. But despite a temperature of -19, several hundred people have turned up to hear him speak.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, (Translation): What we have to decide is, whether we are taking a highway toward building a fair social state in Russia, or whether we continue to follow our current KGB oligarchic comeback track towards a totalitarian dead-end.
Many of those drawn here are elderly and Kasyanov knows how to work the crowd, promising to double their pensions and improve local roads. But some have also come here to challenge him with allegations that Kasyanov amassed a vast personal fortune the last time he was in power.
OLD MAN, (Translation): Tell me, when you were PM, large loans were taken in USA, and they were stolen.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV (Translation): When I was PM, we didn't take out a single loan anywhere, I stopped all the loans and all the grain imports. What you have heard on TV is a state invented lie. It is a lie.
It soon becomes clear that many in the crowd are not here to support Kasyanov.
WOMAN, (Translation): Only vote for Putin, no Kasyanovs. They are enemies of the people.
WOMAN 2, (Translation): (Translation): She has found an honest man. Putin? Goodness me! Do you think Putin is honest?
WOMAN, (Translation): Of course! Putin is fair! Article 6, I can show you!
WOMAN 2, (Translation): I don't need no article! They are all crooks! One gang!
While frustration with corruption still runs deep, many Russians are pleased with Putin's economic management. But Kasyanov believes he's offering something more.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV: There is an improvement of living standards and people already understand that to have money is not enough, to have freedom and respect, that is something which should absolutely exist.
By law, Kasyanov must collect 2 million signatures of support to be allowed to run for the presidency, a contest he claims he could win if on a fair and level playing field.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV: If authorities meet our demands which is very simple, to implement constitutional obligations to arrange free and fair elections. If they do this, we will win.
The next day, Kasyanov and his entourage have travelled 500km north to the city of Penza. Today it's even colder, 23 below zero, but yet another outdoor venue awaits.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, (Translation): Once again they try to impose fear on us. The fear that if you are against the authorities, you are an enemy.
Today, even fewer people have turned up, barely 150 in a city of 800,000 and here Kasyanov faces a protest which is far more organised.
ACTIVISTS, (Translation): Misha 2% you wont sell Russia as president.
Local activists from the pro-Putin Nashi youth group are trying to spoil Kasyanov's appearance in Penza with a noisy intervention.
MAN, (Translation): That man used to recieve 2% from each deal he ever made, from every contract that he signed. This is why he is called "Misha two percent". We came here really to express our will. We don't want him to become the president.
With more than 100,000 members, Nashi has the capacity to organise protests anywhere in Russia, and for the past year they have been openly challenging anyone who dares speak out against Vladimir Putin. But their nationalist rhetoric and rapid growth have caused deep concern in the West.
GEORGY BEZCHINSKY, ACTIVIST (Translation): The photographs decorating these walls were taken by the participants themselves, by our commissars and activists.
At the Moscow headquarters of Nashi, a young activist called Georgy Bezchinsky was eager to show me around. Nashi's blatant pro-Putin stance and its targeting of his political opponents has drawn accusations that it's simply a propaganda tool of the Kremlin, but Georgy disagrees.
GEORGY BEZCHINSKY, (Translation): I know how these actions are organised and I know their costs to people concerning their emotional, moral and physical efforts, and I absolutely don't agree with you. People sincerely come to express their civil position.
The next day, thousands of Nashi activists are staging a protest near the offices of the European Union because some of its members were banned from travelling in Europe.
GEORGY BEZCHINSKY, (Translation): Here we are using the old allegory "For whom the bell tolls." Today the bell tolls for democracy and civil freedoms in Europe.
Nashi's actions mostly mirror Russia's foreign policy and diplomatic disputes, often with a paranoid anti-Western twist like the sentiments expressed in the group's recruitment video. This Cold War rhetoric sits oddly in Moscow, a city which now boasts all the trappings of modern capitalism including the latest luxury concept stores and fashionable bars. But the bright lights mask a bitter fight for control currently under way in the Kremlin, where Putin has turned on some of his closest colleagues in the security elite, men who'd backed his rise to power. What Putin has done by anointing Medvedev as his preferred successor is to effectively isolate and cut loose the KGB and FSB stalwarts who supported him including his deputy chief of staff, Igor Sechin. Now with so much at stake, the faction led by Sechin is fighting back and a real Kremlin power struggle is taking place. Igor Sechin informally represents the country's security elite, and has been described as the second most powerful man in Russia. He has no direct links or loyalty to Putin's chosen successor, Dmitri Medvedev, and that makes Sechin a potent political foe.
STANISLAV BELKOVSKY: Mr Sechin is the only really dangerous enemy. Medvedev has numerous enemies, but Mr Sechin is the only really dangerous one. Medvedev would be doing his best to get rid of Mr Sechin during his first year in office.
The most telling sign of the battle within is the appearance in Russian news media of stunning allegations about a huge personal fortune amassed by President Putin himself.
STANISLAV BELKOVSKY: Certainly Putin abandons his post not just a retired politician and ex-president. He's the richest man in Europe. I estimate his assets personally controlled by himself at $40 billion.
Stanislav Belkovsky's claims about Putin have already been published in Russia, and widely reported by the Western media. He says research by his think-tank shows the alleged fortune is derived from hidden shareholdings in major Russian and foreign oil companies.
REPORTER: That's a staggering amount of money. How do you estimate that?
STANISLAV BELKOVSKY: I believe his share of Surgutneftegaz oil and gas company. It's some stock of Gazprom, gas monopoly controlled by Mr Putin through a sophisticated network of off-shore institutions.
So far, and despite increasing media attention, President Putin has made no comment on the allegations of secret shareholdings. Campaign workers race to meet the deadline to compile the 2 million signatures Kasyanov needs to run for the presidency, but whispers are already circulating from Kremlin insiders that he will be barred from the election. Kasyanov remains confident.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, (Translation): We have the best specialists, just as it was when we were in government.
But just a week later, the electoral commission meets to vote on ending Kasyanov's campaign. And with that, the last truly independent candidate is thrown out of the race. Election officials claiming that 13% of the 2 million signatures were either forged or invalid.
MIKHAIL KASYANOV, (Translation): In this situation I call on all my partisans, all my supporters, on those Russian citizens who were going to vote for me, not to participate in this farce.
Just like last December's parliamentary elections, the result of the up-coming presidential election is a forgone conclusion. Dmitry Medvedev will win with a landslide. And although by Western standards the whole scenario might appear to be a sham, the great majority of Russians, including struggling babushkas like Raya, are happy to keep things just they way are.
RAYA SHAFIGINA (Translation): They are both good men. Putin did a lot of good things. They caught a lot of bribe-takers, stopped corruption. If Medvedev follows his way, I think it will be good too.
Reporter/Cameraman:
NICK LAZAREDES
Editor:
ROWAN TUCKER-EVANS
Producer:
AARON THOMAS
Local Support:
ILYA KOUZNETSOFF