The beginning of a new stage of the presidential campaign became the key political event in Russia. Russian TV channels began to broadcast electoral videos of the candidates. According to the law, each of the candidates for the highest office is given free airtime. Thus, the agitation campaign is now in full force.
Our political columnist Pavel Zarubin assessed it.
March 18, 2018 Russian Presidential Election
Each step of each candidate: where they were, what they said and did. We’ll tell about everything in detail. 60 hours of free federal TV airtime, 338 regional TV channels, 280 radio stations, and 15 newspapers. The agitation campaign opened huge possibilities for the presidential candidates.
Starting today, they can also broadcast their videos for free. The only self-nominee in this campaign has just a quarter of the airtime a political party's candidate is entitled to. Today, candidates for the highest office in the country perform in several regions at once.
Today, a humanitarian convoy was sent to Donbass from the Lenin State Farm. Sweets, cookies, hygiene products. Boxes are sent with pre-glued stickers. A tablet with an inscription saying Grudinin takes photos and videos. This convoy, as they declare in the CPRF, is the 70th, the jubilee one. In the past years, as they say here, thousands of tons of medicines, food, and clothing have been sent to the People's Republics. School children sent letters in response.
Pavel Grudinin: "They wrote that they had never seen such gifts. And it pleases us a lot".
Gennady Zyuganov: "Mr. Grudinin, we sent 100,000 New Year gifts, reaching almost every school".
Pavel Grudinin, the CPRF candidate: "I think it's very important for the people who’re in this situation to feel they have friends who’ll never abandon them. I wish all of you could take part in such campaigns as ours because this is a common cause. Helping people who find themselves in difficult conditions is a common cause".
For helping Donbass, Gennady Zyuganov today awarded Grudinin and others with commemorative medals in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Red Army.
Candidate Zhirinovsky: "We won, smile, hurray, hurray!"
A joint photo of the shadow government, as they refer to themselves in the LDPR. Candidate Zhirinovsky presented his team and listed the appointments to take place if he is elected President. There are 50 portraits on the wall, the key positions are announced by Zhirinovsky himself.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky: "Alexei Ostrovsky will be the Prime Minister of the LDPR shadow government. he’s been governor of the Smolensk Oblast for six years".
Alexei Ostrovsky presents a report. Andrei Lugovoi is suggested as the FPS director, and so on.
Vladimir Zhirinovsky: "He'll be in charge of tourism. Is there anybody who smokes in this government? No. Does anyone drink alcohol? No. We don’t need doping! Our government should be the most honest, there’s no corruption in our government. This illness should be cured from the top. This government is the youngest, its average age is 37".
As for the students who gathered at the Krasnoyarsk University to meet with Grigory Yavlinsky, their average age is 18-20. He speaks the language they understand well.
Grigory Yavlinsky: "Get ready, get ready, let's talk! You’ll all represent Dud".
The Siberians are worried about the Russian territory being inhabited unevenly. The vast majority lives in the European part, several fold more than in the Far East. Yavlinsky has his own recipe for free resettlement.
Grigory Yavlinsky, the Yabloko party candidate: "Every citizen of Russia should get free land to build their own house, for themselves and for their families. Selling or exchanging it would be impossible, nor growing tangerines or anything else. This land should only be used for building houses for their families".
Every hour, the Goznak factory in Moscow prints 32,000 ballot papers. The names of the candidates are arranged in alphabetical order: Baburin, Grudinin, Zhirinovsky, Putin, Sobchak, Suraykin, Titov, and Yavlinsky. There’s brief information about each candidate: the date of birth, place of work, how exactly they were nominated for participation in elections. On the day of the presidential election, March 18, voters will be given such forms to put into the ballot box after voting.
"Insert each voting paper facing down".
In Yekaterinburg, they showed how new electronic ballot boxes will work. Voting commissions workers say that they can’t be compared to the old ones.
"They didn’t work, and paper got stuck. We had to lubricate them. And this is new equipment!"
The polling stations will be equipped with web cameras, which will provide for the maximum transparency of the vote.
Activists of the National Public Monitoring public observers network demand that everything be done for even greater transparency of the election. They held pickets in several cities at once. Their participants asked to clear the voters lists from the so-called phantom voters. Earlier, the Central Election Commission reported that half a million such names have been eliminated from the lists.
Boris Titov: "This should be a very solemn event, and I haven’t even seen how beautiful it is here".
Having cut the ribbon, Boris Titov opened his new headquarters and met with his proxies. They created a festive atmosphere with a lot of balloons, which loudly reminded of themselves during the conversation.
Boris Titov: "Of course, it was planned this way, as everyone knows".
Nikolai Fomenko, Igor Yurgens, and other Titov's 528 proxies. The key topic of the campaign is the protection of small and medium business.
Boris Titov, candidate for the Party of Growth: "Usually during a crisis, when the situation is difficult in all countries, they usually reduce pressure on business, on the contrary, to let business survive. But we have the opposite situation. The incomes of the state are declining and need to be replenished. And few people care what comes next. So we’re working on this, we’re working on this all around the country".
Maxim Suraykin: "Go on, go on!"
After taking his tie off, Maxim Suraykin picks up his big dumbbells.
Maxim Suraykin: "I haven’t warmed up yet but I will".
In the Functional Crossfit Center of the Moscow Oblast Noginsk, presidential candidate Maxim Suraykin demonstrates his sports shape.
Maxim Suraykin: "I think very few other candidates can do a cartwheel."
He says he’s a rated sportsman and thanks the Soviet times for his shape.
Maxim Suraykin, the Communists of Russia candidate: "We remember how well every young person was provided with the opportunity to do sports in the Soviet Union. There were district and backyard sports clubs, as well as gyms. Now, unfortunately, there are fewer such clubs. And the issue of their support is an issue of the state policy."
Sergey Baburin:
- And who develops these patterns?
- Designers.
- Designers?
Sergey Baburin visited the Institute of Garment Industry in Moscow, where clothes for people of extreme professions are manufactured. Non-burning fabrics, heated suits. There are new developments in medicine: tissue which won’t allow a gangrene to grow. A conversation with the factory employees about the topics that concern everyone.
Sergey Baburin, candidate from the Russian People's Union party: "Due to the unification of polyclinics, people now need to go across the city to see the oculist, then back to see the dentist, though before any doctor was available at a local clinic and one needs to make an appointment months before seeing the cardiologist. This is unacceptable. If some laws are controversial, they are wrong. It means that the approach is wrong."
Ksenia Sobchak: "To Vasilyeva Yelizaveta Andreyevna!"
Ksenia Sobchak and her mother, Lyudmila Narusova, presented grants from the Anatoly Sobchak Foundation to the best students of the St. Petersburg State University law school.
Ksenia Sobchak: "You are the next generation, and if you grow up to be full of cynicism, full of cynicism, understanding of the situation and learn that sometimes you need to keep silent, sometimes you have to say what is expected of you, and sometimes you need to make some decision because the country is like this, and we aren't ready, then nothing will change. So, only professional and conscientious young people can change our country"
Ksenia and the students discussed in detail the principles that Anatoly Sobchak had come to politics with and defended.
Great discoveries will surely come out of these children's inventions. Proactivity is the top priority at Arkhangelsk School. Putin's headquarters co-chairman, the head of the Sirius Center, Yelena Shmelyova, believes that such an education model needs to be spread to the regions. In conversation with the volunteers from the Putin's staff, the co-chairman emphasizes that when talking with people, they can and should learn about the problems sometimes no one knows about.
Yelena Shmelyova: "A young father came to see me in Novosibirsk. He said that he has a disabled child and he can’t put him in a wheelchair. All social services are represented by women, and secondly, they’re aimed at young children. And when children reach adolescence, their parents can't put them in a wheelchair. That's what he told me. So, there’s a small niche you learn about only when talking to someone".
And given the scope of the volunteer movement in Russia, there are, of course, more opportunities to help.
Today, a mission of observers from the CIS started its work in Russia. In total, there’ll be about 300 people, some will begin monitoring in the coming days, some will arrive in the country towards the voting day.
We follow all the events.
March 18, 2018 Russian Presidential Election
