Celebrities and worship of Russian President Putin Election news

In 2003, Yulia Volkova, half of the Russian pop duo TATU, performed Not Gonna Get Us, a famous song about two schoolgirls in love at the MTV Music Awards in California.

The event’s films were viewed millions of times around the world, and Vice magazine says the screening “took women’s attention to the forefront”.

Last year, Volkova appeared in a very different video.

There, in the legislative elections of September 19, the State Duma spoke with the intention of presenting it to the lower house of the Russian parliament with the ruling United Russia party.

“I am going to Dumara with the United Russia to ensure that real decisions are made to benefit the majority of our citizens, not verbal ones,” said Volkova, now a 35-year-old mother-son, in a May 13 video with the Orthodox Christian Cross.

The video was intended for the primaries in the western region of Ivanovo in western Russia, known for its poverty and the scarcity of male shortages.

Volkova lost in front of a dark male officer.

But his failure has not stopped other Russian celebrities who want to become politicians – mostly with a card in favor of Vladimir Putin, the United Russia or the so-called “systemic opposition”, a trio of parties nominally opposed to the behemoth of power, but never critical of the Russian president.

The Kremlin takes these celebrities with open arms.

Smiling TV faces, advertisements and leaflets with contrasts suppression of dissent this was exacerbated before the Duma elections.

Activists strongly question the honesty of the Kremlin’s pro-lights.

“I suspect that they will not defend the interests of Russian citizens, but will pursue their own interests,” said opposition activist Violetta Grudina, a city in the northwestern city of Murmaks, which has been subjected to arrests, interrogations and allegations of slander. after being notified of the decision to run in the municipal elections.

“This is the Kremlin’s way of creating spoilers, creating the excitement of choice,” Grudina told Al Jazeera.

Limited intentions

For celebrities, the Duma is not the starting point for a campaign for mayor, government or presidency.

It is a safe port in many terms, a source of publicity and many advantages, including the fact that the boxes are funded by a campaign manager who worked in Washington, Moscow, Berlin and Minsk.

“Politics in the West is a sphere of activity, a sphere of service, but in Russia politics is a way of life,” said Vitali Shkliarov, who worked in the campaigns of Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders. he promoted opposition candidates He was imprisoned and tortured in Russia and Belarus after working with an opposition candidate in last year’s presidential election.

Russian celebrities want to be in politics “not because they want to serve, but because they want to live well,” he told Al Jazeera.

Putin methodologically eliminates his anti-government stance by imprisoning his opponents and maintaining dissent [Sputnik/Sergei Savostyanov/Pool via Reuters]

Experts say that the weaker sides in Putin are getting the lights to improve their acceptance ratings, while Russia needs its help to legitimize its inevitable victory.

Essentially, they have been accused of directing the party to the vote for years – election monitors, critics and hundreds of thousands of people gathered in the biggest protests of the 1991 Soviet fall a decade ago.

“He is not afraid to lose, because the Central Election Commission will falsify his victory,” former opposition lawmaker Gennady Gudkov told Al Jazeera.

“But he’s desperate to somehow legitimize himself in front of the public,” he said.

Artists and war criminals

This year’s list of horrible politicians is a motley band and includes a rap that calls itself Purulent, a reality TV star and a couple of pop singers.

One is Denis Maidanov, and his patriotic hit “Russia, Forward!” and “Who are the Russians.”

“Many parents say they educate their children with my songs, and that is a sign of their confidence,” Komsomolskaya told Pravda board in early June.

Zakhar Prilepin is another lawmaker, a former novelist and activist for the National Bolshevik Party, who defended the ideas the Kremlin once banned as “extreme” – the annexation of Crimea and Russian-speaking regions of Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Prilepin’s 2006 novel Sankya was considered a “manifesto” by the anti-Kremlin youth, and in 2008 he formed a nationalist party Alexey Navalny with new anti-corruption blogger.

But after Moscow annexed Crimea and backed pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine, many national Bolsheviks pledged allegiance to Putin – and joined the rebels.

Prilepin led a group of “volunteers” who exploded in 2018 and admitted to committing war crimes as a “consultant” to a separatist leader.

“I led a military unit that killed people. A lot. No other battalion in Donetsk could match my battalion rates, ”he said in a 2019 interview.

“Systemic Opposition”

Last year, Prilepin created the For Truth party with actor and Orthodox priest Ivan Okhlobystin – who wants to regain the death penalty in Russia and crown Putin as “king”.

They then introduced a clean international celebrity.

Steven Seagal, the action hero of the 1990s Hollywood film, joined the group For Truth in December.

In 2016, he received a Russian passport from Putin, saying he was “one of the greatest living leaders in the world” and in favor of the annexation of Crimea.

In May, For Truth formed A Just Russia, a pro-Putin socialist and socialist party. The 450-seat Duman is the weakest of the three parties in the 23-seat “systemic opposition”.

However, it could lose them in September, as only five percent of Russians want to vote for the party, according to a survey conducted by the Levada center in March.

Peaceful ‘veterans’

Russia, on the other hand, seems to be a few years away from this struggle for survival.

It has tens of thousands of members, with offices in every city and town, and what critics call an “administrative resource,” a national system that forces government workers, teachers and medical staff to vote for their candidates.

In May, he reached a “cooperation agreement” with the Donbas Volunteer Union, which fought on behalf of the separatists.

“We are counting not only on your support, but also on the maximum turnout you have had in the elections,” Andrey Turcha, the secretary general of the United Nations, told a “veteran” conference on May 10th.

“We need to prove that we can fight, that we can defend our homeland on the battlefields, but that we can do something in a peaceful life,” Union leader Alexander Borodai replied.

Borodai is best known for having been “president of the Donetsk People’s Republic” in 2014 for “two months”.

Ukraine has accused him and his “government” of thousands of murders, kidnappings, evictions and expropriations.

But Borodai feels good at home and wants his brothers in his arms to join the political current.

“Russian volunteers need to get power,” he said in a video posted on the United Kingdom’s website.