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      Angela Merkel Is Leaving. It’s Time.

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      BERLIN — In central Berlin, a giant billboard shows a pair of hands, arranged in the shape of a diamond, in front of a female torso dressed in a green jacket. “Tschüss Mutti,” the billboard reads. “Bye, bye, Mommy.”Even without a face, Germans know who’s being depicted. The diamond, the colorful jacket and the word “Mutti” are iconic, just like Angela Merkel herself.After 16 years, Germany is saying “Tschüss” to its longtime chancellor. Across the country, the departure of Ms. Merkel has brought out affectionate nostalgia, tinged with a drop of irony. Yet there’s also fatigue, verging on irritation, a twitchy restlessness to see her off and start afresh. As with most farewells, feelings are mixed.For Ms. Merkel, a leader who never sought acclaim, a low-key, almost ambivalent exit feels fitting. But it also reveals an irony about her rule. The qualities that ensured her success — her caution and consistency, her firmness and diligence — are now, at the end of her tenure, leading some to regard her departure with relief. The Germany Ms. Merkel made, in nearly two decades of steady stewardship, is ready to move on.For all her calm, Ms. Merkel’s time in charge has not been without tumult. She steered Germany through a series of crises — the financial crash in 2008, the euro debt crisis that followed, the migration crisis of 2015 and, of course, the pandemic. She brokered a truce, albeit a brittle one, between Russia and Ukraine, helped to negotiate Brexit and saw Donald Trump come and go. Each event had the potential to sunder the world. In part thanks to Ms. Merkel, none did.Her role in these crises continues to be debated. Many progressives maintain that her austerity policies have done more harm than good, and many conservatives believe she should have closed Germany’s borders to migrants in 2015. The overall verdict, though, is unlikely to change. Under great pressure, Ms. Merkel was a conservative in the best sense, retaining the country’s prosperity, cohesion and purpose. Her great achievement was not what she built, but what she managed to keep.Yet preservation can quickly turn to stagnation. Many of Ms. Merkel’s policies that had an initially stabilizing effect carried hidden long-term costs. And at the very moment she is about to leave office, that’s starting to show. Her “sins of omission” — as a British historian and Germany expert, Timothy Garton Ash, put it to me — are becoming painfully obvious.Take Europe. Across nearly two decades, Ms. Merkel played an outsize role in guiding the union through a succession of challenges. But in the process, she stored up future problems.In 2016, for example, the chancellor spearheaded a deal with Turkey to take in refugees. The move ended the yearlong migration crisis, in which more than a million migrants claimed asylum in Europe. But it’s hardly a sustainable solution, neither for Turkey — where economic difficulties and growing numbers of refugees threaten to destabilize the country — nor for Europe. Migrants, especially after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s takeover of the country, will continue to seek refuge on the continent. Some workable solution, attentive to the needs of both migrants and citizens, must be found.In other areas, too, Ms. Merkel’s approach fell short. Her handling of the euro debt crisis helped secure the future of the bloc, but at the cost of leaving the underlying dynamics — overindebted southern countries and an unbalanced monetary union — untouched. Her conciliatory approach to Russia, not least over the controversial Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, looks ever more untenable as President Vladimir Putin ruthlessly consolidates his regime.And while her inclination to avoid censuring Hungary and Poland for their breaches of the rule of law protected the bloc against disintegration, it sidestepped essential questions about the character of Europe. In Ms. Merkel’s absence, European leaders — including Germany’s next chancellor, whoever that is — will need to determine the bloc’s future course. How will it navigate the increased rivalry between America and China? To what extent will it embark on a more autonomous defense strategy? And how will it combat the rise of the far right?At home, a similar pattern prevailed. Look at the economy. Yes, Germany’s export surplus came to an all-time high during Ms. Merkel’s tenure, and G.D.P. reached a record high in 2019. But it has come at the cost of an increased — some say excessive — dependence on the Chinese market, something Ms. Merkel has done little to address. What’s more, by shielding Germany’s car industry from more ambitious carbon-emission goals, Ms. Merkel has in effect exonerated managers from the need to innovate. That’s one reason German car companies are scrambling to keep up with their American and Chinese counterparts.Then there’s climate change. Trying to protect key industries and fearing to impose too much change on voters, Ms. Merkel refrained from any far-reaching plan to cut emissions until late in her tenure. And though the share of renewable energy grew to 45 percent during her time in office, many experts agree that on its current trajectory, the country will not meet its goal of being carbon-neutral by 2045. Despite being seen abroad as the “climate chancellor,” Ms. Merkel has taken only very minor steps toward confronting the defining issue of our time.It all adds up to a country at once cozy and cosseted, ignorant of the dangers waiting in the wings. Ursula Weidenfeld, an economics journalist and the author of a recent biography of the chancellor, has likened Ms. Merkel’s Germany to the Shire in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings.” Peaceful and prosperous, soothingly old-fashioned, self-satisfied to the point of delusion and naïve in a likable yet unnerving way: The analogy is apt.Ms. Merkel protected the Shire, which is what Germans expected of her and why she won four national elections in a row. But in doing so, she fostered its peculiar detachment from the world and its unwillingness to change, innovate or even discuss different ways forward.The chancellor also became stuck in her ways. Humble and unpretentious, she saw herself as a servant to her country. But in return for her service, dedication and competence, she came to expect — demand, even — blind trust. She has grown increasingly impatient with the forever chatter of Germany’s political class.Her famous phrase during the migration crisis — “We can do this” — was to some a welcome dose of optimism. But to others, not least in her own party, it was a decree, a royal diktat from above silencing opposition and curtailing debate. Perhaps that tendency hardened over time. Ahead one of the endless meetings with Germany’s 16 governors during the pandemic’s first wave in 2020, she reportedly complained about the “orgies of debates on reopening the country.”It was an unusual outburst, one that underscored a growing unease about her methods and her achievements. After all, the pandemic exposed Germany’s lack of digital services, the need to modernize its public health service and the vulnerability of the economy’s supply chains. The floods in July, in which over 200 people lost their lives, were a tragic reminder that Germany will not be spared the perils of climate change. Against this backdrop, the prospect of change — no matter how familiar the candidates — has become more appealing.Just a couple of years ago, Ms. Merkel was garlanded as the “leader of the free world.” Against the chaos and disruption of Mr. Trump, her sober, judicious style was widely envied. Now, in a twist of history, different qualities are wanted. I’m pretty sure there will be many moments in the not-too-distant future when Germans will painfully miss Angela Merkel. And yet: It is time. Tschüss Mutti.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      In Russia Election Results, Online Votes Sweep Putin Opponents Aside

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      The official tally gave a strong parliamentary majority to President Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party. Opposition leaders cried foul, pointing to earlier signs of gains.MOSCOW — Russia’s ruling party retained a two-thirds majority in the lower house of Parliament and claimed a sweeping victory in opposition-minded Moscow — a stark display of Kremlin power as the authorities on Monday announced the results of a nationwide parliamentary election that opposition leaders denounced as blatantly falsified.Partial results released after the polls closed on Sunday evening had shown significant gains by opposition parties and potential victories by several candidates supported by the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. But by the time Russia’s Central Election Commission revealed a nearly full count on Monday, those gains were largely gone — prompting anger from Kremlin critics, claims of large-scale fraud and scattered calls for protests.Russian elections are not free and fair, and the country’s best known opposition figures were barred from the ballot, jailed or exiled in the months before the three-day-long vote that ended on Sunday. But Mr. Navalny’s allies had hoped to use a coordinated protest vote in the election to deliver a rebuke to President Vladimir V. Putin.The focal point of the opposition’s anger on Monday was the Russian capital, a stronghold of anti-Kremlin sentiment where the government had urged voters to cast their ballots online. Challengers to the ruling party, United Russia, led in several electoral districts before the results of online voting were tabulated, with a delay, on Monday. Soon after, the election commission declared the pro-Kremlin candidate the victor in each of those districts.As a result, the ruling United Russia party swept to a dominant performance and kept its two-thirds “supermajority” in the lower house of Parliament, the Duma — all despite recording approval ratings below 30 percent in recent polls published by state-run research groups. The party received 50 percent of the vote with 52 percent turnout — and won 198 of the 225 seats apportioned in direct, single-district elections.“We’ve never had a voting process that we didn’t know anything about,” Roman Udot, a co-head of Golos, an independent election monitoring group, said of Moscow’s online voting system. “There’s some kind of big, big skeleton in the closet here.”An official in the Moscow city government explained the delay in the tabulation of online votes by pointing to a “decoding” process that took “considerably longer than we had expected,” the Interfax news agency reported.Mr. Navalny said in a social media message from prison that the delay in releasing online voting results allowed “the deft little hands” of United Russia officials to “fake the results to the exact opposite.” The Communist Party, which came in second nationwide and in several of the disputed district-level races in the capital, said it would not recognize the online voting results in Moscow.Graffiti depicting the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny in St. Petersburg in April. Anton Vaganov/ReutersBut it was not clear what, if anything, critics of the outcome could do about the situation. The judiciary is under the thumb of the Kremlin, while prominent opposition figures are exiled or behind bars. Street protests are increasingly punished by jail terms.In all, the outcome further demonstrated Mr. Putin’s strengthening lock on political life — and served, perhaps, as a dress rehearsal for the presidential election of 2024, in which Mr. Putin could seek a fifth term.“For the president, the main thing was and remains the competitiveness, openness and honesty of the elections,” Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, told reporters on Monday. “We, of course, assess the electoral process very, very positively.”Kremlin critics had been warning for weeks that online voting could open up new avenues for fraud, since the tabulation process was even less transparent than the counting of paper ballots.On Monday, the Communists called for protests, but the Moscow authorities quickly denied them a permit because of pandemic-related restrictions, according to state news agencies. Leonid Volkov, a top aide to Mr. Navalny who has been trying to coordinate opposition votes from exile, stopped short of urging people out into the streets but said that he and his colleagues would support “any peaceful protest actions” that could help overturn the results.Television images on Monday showed police trucks massing at central Moscow’s Pushkin Square, but it was not clear whether any protests would materialize.“The Kremlin took this step because it was certain it could get away with it,” Mr. Volkov said in a post on the messaging app Telegram. “Putin decided that he need not be afraid of the street. Whether or not he’s right — we’ll find out.”Oleg Matsnev More

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      Russian Election Shows Declining Support for Putin’s Party

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      With voting in the country neither free nor fair, United Russia is still expected to retain power easily even if its seats in Parliament slip.MOSCOW — Early results in Russia’s parliamentary elections showed a rise in opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin’s governing party, though it was nevertheless expected to cruise easily to victory.In partial results broadcast by state television after three days of voting ended on Sunday, the party, United Russia, carried 44 percent of the vote, 10 percentage points less than in the previous election in 2016. In second place, the Communist Party received 22 percent, compared with 13 percent in 2016.Russian elections are not free and fair, and Parliament’s role in recent years has mainly been to rubber-stamp the Kremlin’s initiatives while providing a veneer of democratic legitimacy to Mr. Putin’s rule. Over the weekend, videos of ballot stuffing and other apparent instances of fraud circulated widely on social media. But allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny had hoped to use the elections to deliver a rebuke to Mr. Putin by consolidating the opposition vote.The weekend’s elections came amid a harsh crackdown on dissent by the Kremlin and murmurings of popular discontent. Apparently fearing a rebuke at the ballot box, the authorities barred just about all well-known opposition figures from running for Parliament, while forcing many dissidents into exile and declaring popular independent media outlets to be “foreign agents.”The multiday nature of the elections — measures officially put in place to reduce the spread of the coronavirus — increased the likelihood of fraud by making the process harder to monitor, election observers and Kremlin critics said. And given the system by which the 450 seats in the lower house of Parliament, the Duma, are apportioned, United Russia could still maintain its two-thirds majority in the chamber despite getting less than half of the votes.The opposition’s uphill battle was complicated by decisions by Google and Apple to comply with Russian government demands to block access to Navalny-related content that was supposed to coordinate the protest vote. After the two tech giants on Friday removed from their stores a smartphone app connected to Mr. Navalny’s movement, Google over the weekend went further, apparently complying with a government request to block YouTube videos and Google Docs files that Mr. Navalny’s allies were using to coordinate voting across the country’s 225 electoral districts.Google did not respond on Sunday to a request for comment. Mr. Navalny’s allies, who are organizing the protest vote campaign from abroad, said they were notified by Google that their content could be blocked because of a government request.“This content is not available on this country domain due to a legal complaint from the government,” a YouTube message says when users in Russia try to open one of the blocked videos.Google’s compliance with Russia’s demands in recent days has represented a remarkable concession for a company that prides itself on enabling the open exchange of information. In Russia, Google’s products — in particular, YouTube — have helped provide avenues for free expression even as the Kremlin has rolled back democratic freedoms.Specific threats of prosecution against some of Google’s more than 100 employees inside Russia forced the company to take down the Navalny smartphone app, a person familiar with Google’s decision told The New York Times on Friday. Russian courts in recent months have outlawed Mr. Navalny’s movement as extremist and declared his “smart voting” campaign to be illegal.Nevertheless, Mr. Navalny’s allies have been pushing the tactic they call “smart voting” to pool opposition votes and elect as many challengers to United Russia as possible, no matter the challengers’ political views. Their campaign garnered support among opposition-minded voters, many of whom managed to find out which candidate the “smart voting” campaign supported in their district despite Google and Apple’s compliance with the Russian government’s demands.“This is an election without any choice, and while they can make up whatever result is necessary for them, ‘smart voting’ is a good mechanism,” said Philipp Samsonov, 32, a photographer in Moscow. “I hope that one day I can vote with my heart.”Mr. Samsonov said he planned to vote for the candidate picked by the Navalny team in his district — in his case, a Communist — as the person with the best chance of defeating the governing party’s candidate. Mr. Samsonov also said he planned to vote on Sunday evening to reduce the chances that something would happen to his ballot.It was too early to tell Sunday evening whether Mr. Navalny’s smart voting campaign had borne fruit, with the early results providing little clarity on how individual candidates were faring on a district-by-district level. But nationwide, the surge in support for the Communists and the decline for United Russia reflected an increase in Russian discontent. On a YouTube broadcast Sunday evening, a top aide to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, described the probable loss of seats by United Russia as progress in the strategy of chipping away at Mr. Putin’s hold on power.“This is, to put it lightly, a significant shift in the political landscape of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Volkov said.The “smart voting” app, used by allies of the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, which Apple and Google removed in Russia on Friday.Alexander Zemlianichenko/Associated PressA ballot box on Sunday in the village of Bolshoy Kunaley, Russia. Videos appearing to show ballot stuffing and other types of fraud during the vote have circulated online.Maxim Shemetov/ReutersGennadi A. Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party in Russia, said there had been a “huge amount” of violations in the elections and warned of demonstrations in the coming days — a notable statement because the Communists are typically loyal to Mr. Putin on key issues.“I can’t rule out that all this will lead to mass protests,” Mr. Zyuganov said Saturday on Twitter. “I am sure that people won’t stand for a blatant substitution of their choice.”In St. Petersburg, some independent election observers were removed from polling stations and detained by the police right before votes were counted. One observer, Ksenia Frolova, was detained after filing numerous complaints about irregularities.“We discovered that the same person cast a vote several times at different polling stations,” Ms. Frolova, 18, a biology student, said in a phone interview shortly after being released from a police station. “I feel morally exhausted. You just feel that none of your complaints mattered.”Last year, widespread fraud in the presidential election in neighboring Belarus set off huge street protests — an outcome that analysts say the Kremlin is determined to prevent from occurring in Russia. Buses of riot police officers were stationed around central Moscow throughout the weekend, but there were no significant protests.During the election, the authorities appeared to be pulling out all the stops to get the typical United Russia base to the polls: public sector workers, members of the military and security services, and pensioners. In central Moscow on Friday, groups of men in civilian clothes, all with similar, tightly cropped haircuts, lined up outside a polling station that covers the Russian Ministry of Defense.Some acknowledged that they were members of the military and that they had been “strongly advised” by their commanders to vote on Friday. Others said that they had been given time off to vote before the weekend, which they planned to spend out of town.And many Russians continue to support Mr. Putin. Outside a Moscow polling place, a teacher, Tatyana Kolosova, 46, said she had voted against United Russia to inject some “competition into the political sphere.” She said she hoped for a government shake-up after the elections that would result in more being done to reduce unemployment and support private business.But she dismissed Mr. Navalny as “an enemy of our country” and promised to vote for Mr. Putin if he ran for a fifth term as president in 2024, recalling the relative poverty and chaos of the 1990s, before he came to power.“I’m thankful that God gave us such a leader,” she said.Adam Satariano More

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      How Putin’s Propaganda System Keeps Him in Power

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      Elections in Russia are always tricky for the Kremlin. Offer too much choice, and citizens may pick the wrong candidates. Offer too little, and the underlying authoritarianism of the regime becomes grimly apparent.This year, for the parliamentary elections that began on Friday and end on Sunday, President Vladimir Putin is not taking any chances. From the moment Aleksei Navalny, the opposition leader and the Kremlin’s best-known critic, returned to the country in January, the president has overseen a wave of repression.Scores of independent media outlets have been labeled foreign agents, hobbling their activities, and opposition figures have either been banned from political activity or intimidated into exile. Mr. Navalny is in jail, most of his closest associates have left the country and his organization has been disbanded. The opposition is in tatters.There has been no sustained outcry within the country against these moves. Mr. Putin’s approval ratings remain solid, and the election is likely to return a majority for his party, United Russia. The system grinds on.At the heart of the Kremlin’s continued social and political control sits the Russian media. A sprawling network of television stations and newspapers, often lurid in style and spurious in content, the Kremlin’s propaganda system is a central pillar of Mr. Putin’s power. Against all the dissent and discontent with his regime, inside and outside the country, it acts as an impermeable shield. Combined with repression, it is how he wins.Nearly all of Russia’s television stations and newspapers are under state control. Some, like REN TV, are owned by private companies with links to the Kremlin. Others, like Rossiya and Channel One, are state-owned and often deliver outright propaganda as the news.Behind the scenes, Mr. Putin’s accomplices — like Alexei Gromov, who as deputy chief of staff in the presidential administration oversees the media — carefully manage the message. Failures are downplayed, criticism avoided and, at every turn, praise heaped on the president, who is cast as a sensible and wise leader.This machine doesn’t need coercion. An army of reporters, editors and producers, happy to toe any political line in return for promotion and payment, churns out an endless stream of fawning accounts of Mr. Putin, the prime minister and influential regional governors. Conformists and careerists, these journalists are not blind to the realities of contemporary Russia. But they choose to work on the side of the winners.Funded to the tune of billions of dollars by those close to Mr. Putin, the media preys on the population’s worst fears. The threats of economic disaster and territorial disintegration, in a country that suffered both in the 1990s, are constantly invoked: Only loyalty to the Kremlin can keep the monsters at bay. The European Union, Britain and the United States are portrayed as sites of moral decay, rife with political instability and impoverishment.In a country where 72 percent of the population doesn’t have a passport and where the financial means to travel abroad remain generally out of reach, such messages find a receptive audience.This wall-to-wall coverage has profound effects on public opinion. In 2008, as conflict between Russia and neighboring Georgia escalated, the media went into overdrive, depicting Georgia as a haven of anti-Russian activity intent on violence. The results were stunning: A year later, after the war ended, 62 percent of Russians considered Georgia, a small republic in the south Caucasus, to be Russia’s main enemy.Now ruled by a government more friendly to Russia, Georgia has largely disappeared from state television. The view of it as the main enemy has steadily dropped and is now held by just 15 percent of Russians.Both broadcast and print are comprehensively under the Kremlin’s control. So too, nearly, is the internet. Ten years ago, social networks helped bring people to the streets in protest against rigged parliamentary elections. Since then, a set of technological and legislative measures — tapping users’ phones and computers, introducing criminal charges for content labeled “extremist” and curtailing the independence of Russia’s biggest tech company, Yandex — have turned the internet into heavily policed terrain. A social media post can cost a few years in prison.But that’s not the whole story. The great success of Mr. Navalny’s film about Mr. Putin’s alleged mansion by the Black Sea, which has been watched by at least 118 million people since it was released in January, shows that the state’s domination over the media is not enough to prevent undesired content from reaching ordinary Russians. No matter how extensively the Kremlin intervenes in internet platforms — through bots, paid trolls and law enforcement — it remains possible to spread information injurious to the regime.There are still a few independent local and nationwide media outlets in Russia. Though they can hardly compete with state-funded television channels and newspapers, they are able to reach a sizable slice of the population.Meduza, for example, one of Russia’s most respected independent news outlets, draws millions of readers to its website a year, and MediaZona, an independent outlet that focuses on corruption and the misuse of law enforcement powers, added more than two million readers earlier this year through its coverage of Mr. Navalny’s trial. TV Rain, an independent television channel, manages to command the attention of 2.3 million viewers.This success, however small and circumscribed, proved too much for Mr. Putin — and he turned to repression. Through the “foreign agent law,” introduced in 2012 and initially aimed at foreign-funded media such as Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, the Kremlin has been able to decimate the ranks of independent media. Six outlets were given the designation this year, along with 19 journalists. For the smaller publications, it was the end. Bigger outlets, including Meduza, are scrapping for survival.The situation, though bleak, is not lost. Independent journalists and outlets continue to find a way to operate, inventively sidestepping the constraints cast on them by the Kremlin through canny crowdfunding and humor. In this, they offer an example to other independent journalists around the world fighting to keep authoritarian politicians accountable.Even so, Mr. Putin’s media method — propaganda on one hand, repression on the other — continues to bear fruit. Faced with a stagnant economy, an aging population and simmering discontent, it surely can’t go on forever. But, for now, it’s working.Ilya Yablokov is a lecturer in journalism and digital media at Sheffield University, England, the author of “Fortress Russia: Conspiracy Theories in the Post-Soviet World,” and co-author of “Russia Today and Conspiracy Theories: People, Power, Politics on RT.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Elecciones en Rusia: las activistas llevan la violencia doméstica a la agenda electoral

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      Las mujeres de mediana edad son votantes clave para el partido gobernante, que ha ignorado a las víctimas de la violencia de género.MOSCÚ — Sentada en la estrecha cocina de su sede suburbana en Moscú, Alyona Popova apuntó hacia el complejo de edificios de ladrillo de cinco pisos que tiene al lado y explicó por qué la violencia doméstica está en el centro de su campaña por una curul en la Duma, la Cámara Baja del Parlamento de Rusia.“En cada puerta de entrada, tenemos una historia de violencia doméstica”, dijo Popova. “Justo ahí, tenemos a dos abuelas a las que acaban de golpear sus parientes. En la que viene después, tenemos a una madre con tres hijos. A ella la golpea su marido. Y allá, tenemos a una madre golpeada por su hijo”.Mientras hace campaña por todo el ducentésimo quinto distrito electoral, un área de clase trabajadora en la periferia oriental de Moscú, Popova les implora a las mujeres que se rebelen contra el partido en el poder, Rusia Unida, del presidente Vladimir Putin, el cual ha reducido las protecciones para las mujeres a lo largo de varios años. En la antesala de las elecciones de este fin de semana, Popova ha presentado el asunto en términos urgentes y en el primer lugar de su plataforma de campaña se encuentra una propuesta para que todas las leyes relacionadas con la violencia doméstica estén sujetas a sanciones penales.De acuerdo con el análisis que Popova realizó de datos que recabó la agencia nacional de estadística de Rusia, hay más de 16,5 millones de víctimas de violencia doméstica cada año. Entre 2011 y 2019, más de 12.200 mujeres murieron a manos de sus parejas o parientes, es decir dos terceras partes de las mujeres asesinadas en Rusia, según un estudio.“Esta es nuestra realidad; la única palabra que podemos usar es ‘epidemia’”, opinó Popova, abogada y activista de 38 años que se está postulando por el partido liberal Yablojo, aunque no es integrante de sus filas.Las luces encendidas de un complejo habitacional de la era soviética en el vecindario de Pervomayskaya en MoscúEmile Ducke para The New York TimesHay evidencia de que muchos rusos coinciden con ella. Una encuesta de 2020 que realizó el Centro Levada, una organización independiente, reveló que casi el 80 por ciento de los encuestados cree que es necesaria una legislación que frene la violencia doméstica. Una petición que inició Popova para apoyar esa ley obtuvo un millón de firmas.Sin embargo, ¿los simpatizantes votarán? Y en una Rusia autoritaria, donde los resultados de las elecciones en esencia están predestinados, ¿marcarán una diferencia?Incluso en un país en el que las mujeres representan el 54 por ciento de la población, la violencia doméstica en su mayor parte sigue sin ser un asunto que motive a los votantes y queda en segundo plano detrás de problemas como la corrupción, el aumento de los precios al consumidor, la falta de oportunidades económicas y la pandemia de la COVID-19.“Para nuestros votantes, este problema está en el lugar 90”, comentó el vicepresidente de la Duma, Pyotr O. Tolstoy, quien busca un segundo periodo con Rusia Unida.Tolstoy se burló de las insinuaciones de que las mujeres podrían abandonar a su partido, el cual controla 336 de las 450 curules de la Duma. En efecto, las mujeres son una parte fundamental de la base de votantes de Rusia Unida. En parte esto se debe a que ocupan la mayoría de los trabajos del sector público en campos como la enseñanza, la medicina y la administración, es decir que sus ingresos a menudo dependen del sistema político en el poder.Mientras salía de una estación de metro una tarde reciente, Irina Yugchenko, de 43 años, también expresó su escepticismo en torno a la atención que le ha puesto Popova a la violencia doméstica. “Claro, sin duda debe haber una ley, pero, si les pasa a las mujeres más de una vez, tenemos que preguntarnos por qué”, comentó, haciendo eco de una opinión común en Rusia. “Si mis amigas tuvieran este problema no lo tolerarían”.Yugchenko dijo que no había decidido por quién votar y dudaba que las elecciones produjeran algún cambio, y agregó con cinismo: “No es la primera vez que votamos”. Un estudio de julio de 2021 encontró que tan solo el 22 por ciento de los encuestados planeaba votar, la cifra más baja en 17 años.Un repartidor de folletos del partido Rusia Unida frente a las elecciones legislativas de 2021 de este fin de semana.Emile Ducke para The New York TimesDurante la última década, Putin y su partido se han vuelto cada vez más conservadores en sus políticas sociales. Cuando se agravó el conflicto de Rusia con Occidente, el Kremlin comenzó a promocionarse como el baluarte de las estructuras familiares y apoyó actitudes reaccionarias hacia los rusos de la comunidad LGBTQ.En 2016, el gobierno etiquetó de “agente extranjero” al Centro ANNA con sede en Moscú, el cual ofrece ayuda legal, material y psicológica a las mujeres que enfrentan problemas de abuso. Ese título acarrea connotaciones negativas e impone requisitos onerosos. El año pasado, el gobierno designó a otro grupo, Nasiliu.net (“No a la violencia”), como agente extranjero.En 2017, los representantes de la Duma votaron 380 a 3 para que se despenalizara de forma parcial la violencia doméstica y la redujeron a una infracción administrativa si ocurre no más de una vez al año. Si el daño da como resultado moretones o sangrado, pero no huesos rotos, se castiga con una multa de tan solo 5000 rublos (68 dólares), poco más de lo que se paga por estacionarse en un lugar prohibido. Solo las lesiones como las contusiones y los huesos rotos, o los ataques repetidos en contra de un familiar, generan cargos penales. No hay ningún instrumento legal para que la policía expida órdenes de alejamiento.El borrador de una ley en contra de la violencia doméstica que fue propuesto en 2019 produjo un debate en la Duma, pero a final de cuentas fue modificado tanto que sus primeros partidarios, entre ellos Popova, quedaron “horrorizados”. Nunca se sometió a votación.Sin embargo, en años recientes, varios casos dramáticos han detonado la indignación, por eso el asunto ha empezado a tener potencial político. En un caso famoso de 2017, el esposo de Margarita Gracheva le cortó ambas manos con un hacha, meses después de que ella empezó a pedir protección de la policía. (Más tarde, él fue sentenciado a 14 años de cárcel. Gracheva ahora es presentadora de un programa de la televisión estatal sobre violencia doméstica).“Por fin este problema obtuvo tanta atención que se convirtió en un asunto político”, comentó Marina Pisklakova-Parker, directora del Centro ANNA.En abril, la Corte Constitucional de Rusia les ordenó a los legisladores que modificaran el código penal para castigar a los perpetradores de violencia doméstica repetitiva y concluyó que las protecciones para las víctimas y los castigos para los agresores eran insuficientes. Además, las agrupaciones activistas han registrado repuntes de violencia doméstica relacionados con la pandemia de la COVID-19.La Duma no ha actuado.Muchos votantes de Rusia Unida aprecian los vales gubernamentales que se conceden a las madres. Las prestaciones se han ampliado recientemente a las mujeres con un solo hijo, en un intento de Moscú por aumentar la decreciente tasa de natalidad del país.Pero eso no sustituye a una protección elemental, dijo Oksana Pushkina, una popular presentadora de televisión que entró en la Duma con Rusia Unida en 2016 y que hizo de la lucha contra la violencia doméstica una de sus prioridades.Oksana Pushkina hizo de la lucha contra la violencia doméstica una de sus prioridadesEmile Ducke para The New York Times“Todas estas son medidas de apoyo que están diseñadas para dejar a la mujer en casa, y no crear oportunidades para su autorrealización e independencia económica”, dijo. “De este modo, las autoridades cubren las necesidades básicas de las mujeres rusas, a cambio de su lealtad política. Pero este gasto gubernamental no es para nada una inversión social”.Pushkina, que defendió la ley de violencia doméstica en la Duma, no fue invitada a presentarse a un segundo mandato.“Aparentemente, Rusia Unida y la gente de la gestión presidencial me consideraron demasiado independiente, y a la agenda pro-feminista demasiado peligrosa”, dijo.Expertos y sobrevivientes afirman que gran parte de la oposición al proyecto de ley de 2019 estaba desinformada, ya que muchos opositores afirmaban erróneamente que si se imponía una orden de alejamiento, un hombre podría perder su propiedad, o que los niños podrían ser retirados de las familias.“Tienen miedo de que vuelva la época de Stalin, cuando la gente delataba a sus vecinos”, dijo Irina Petrakova, una asistente de recursos humanos que sobrevivió a siete años de abusos por parte de su exmarido. Dijo que denunció 23 incidentes a las autoridades en ocho ocasiones, pero que su esposo no ha pasado ni un solo día en la cárcel.“Tienen miedo de que vuelva la época de Stalin, cuando la gente delataba a sus vecinos”,  dijo Irina Petrakova.Emile Ducke para The New York TimesElla, Gracheva y otras dos mujeres han demandado a Rusia ante el Tribunal Europeo de Derechos Humanos por no haberlas protegido.Petrakova, que también trabaja como orientadora, dijo que apoyaba a Popova, cuyo distrito es adyacente al suyo. Pero se encogió de hombros cuando se le preguntó si la negativa de Rusia Unida a combatir la violencia doméstica podría alejar a las mujeres del partido. Muchas votantes, dijo, habían vivido la turbulenta década de 1990 y apreciaban la estabilidad.Tenía en sus planes votar, pero dijo que no había candidatos dignos en su distrito.“Si pudiera votar contra todos, lo haría”, dijo.En Rusia, la mayoría de la oposición ha sido encarcelada, exiliada o tiene prohibido postularse a las elecciones de este fin de semana. El domingo, en una pequeña reunión celebrada en un parque con un electorado potencial, Popova, quien tiene como rivales a otros diez candidatos, mencionó que estaba comprometida a participar en las elecciones hasta donde le fuera posible, aunque haya una competencia desleal.Además, dijo sentirse optimista en relación con encuestas que su equipo mandó a hacer, las cuales mostraron un fuerte apoyo a su favor de parte de las mujeres cuya edad oscila entre los 25 y los 46 años.“Esto quiere decir que las mujeres se están uniendo por el futuro, por un cambio”, comentó Popova. “Esta es la mejor victoria que podemos imaginar durante nuestra campaña”.Dos mujeres jóvenes en el público dijeron que planeaban votar por ella.“Para las mujeres de una generación de mayor edad, tal vez sea normal ver violencia doméstica”, comentó Maria Badmayeva, de 26 años. “Pero en la generación más joven somos más progresistas. Pensamos que los valores que defiende Alyona son esenciales”.El centro de Moscú con el muro del Kremlin y la catedral de San Basilio al fondo. Este fin de semana se celebran las elecciones a la Duma rusa.Emile Ducke para The New York TimesAlina Lobzina colaboró con este reportaje.Valerie Hopkins es corresponsal en Moscú. Anteriormente cubrió Europa Central y del Sureste durante una década, más recientemente para el Financial Times. @Valeriein140 More

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      How Russian Officials 'Manage' Elections With Deceitful Tactics

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      The Russian authorities have used a variety of deceitful tactics to try to manufacture a big victory in parliamentary elections this weekend. Here’s how they do it.MOSCOW — Russia stages local and national elections like clockwork in accordance with its post-Soviet Constitution, but the results are nearly always the same: sweeping victories for President Vladimir V. Putin and the politicians and parties loyal to him.In the parliamentary elections that begin on Friday and run through Sunday, there is little question that his governing United Russia party will win. For the Kremlin, which hopes to mobilize support for government policies and reinforce its legitimacy, the trick is to win handily while maintaining the plausibility of a contested outcome.Here are several ways that the Kremlin tries to create the illusion of democratic choice while making sure it comes out on top.Duplicate CandidatesAmong the candidates voters will choose from in one St. Petersburg district are three men named Boris Vishnevsky, only one of whom is the real opposition politician.Registering multiple candidates with the same or similar names as an opposition candidate is a tried-and-true Russian electoral tactic. Candidates with identical or similar names are registered in 24 of the 225 single-district races in this week’s election — about 10 percent of all races, the newspaper Kommersant reported.Russia by no means has a monopoly on this ploy: It was used in a Florida State Senate race in 2020 — successfully, at least until the scam was uncovered.In the case of the multiple Boris Vishnevskys, the doubles also assumed the appearance of the real opposition candidate, with the same salt-and-pepper beards, thinning hair and plain, button-down shirts.“This is political manipulation,” the real Mr. Vishnevsky, a career politician and member of the Yabloko political party, said in a telephone interview. He said the others had legally changed their names this year and had probably mimicked his appearance with makeup or digitally altered photographs.An election poster with three similarly styled candidates, shown on the cellphone of the real Boris Vishnevsky, a politician running for St Petersburg’s Legislative Assembly.Anton Vaganov/ReutersFake Political PartiesUnlike other authoritarian countries like Saudi Arabia and China, Russia has a multiparty political system that was entrenched when Mr. Putin came to power in 1999.To deal with this, the Kremlin has hit on two strategies: fake political parties and several quasi-independent parties that it calls the “systemic opposition.”After the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny was poisoned in an assassination attempt a year ago, a party popped up that aimed to appeal to the discontented young professionals who form his base of support. The party, called New People, mimics many of his anticorruption messages but supports the continuation of Mr. Putin’s rule.Parties making up the systemic opposition are more established and enduring than the out-and-out fakes. This grouping, which emerged in the mid-2000s under what was called “managed democracy,” includes the Communist Party and the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party. They participate in elections ostensibly as opposition groups, but once elected they vote in lock step with the United Russia party, creating a rubber-stamp Parliament.Until last year, these parties coexisted with the “non-systemic” opposition that Mr. Navalny leads, and called for Mr. Putin’s removal from power. But over the past year, in anticipation of the coming elections, the government has cracked down sharply on the legitimate opposition, sending most of its leaders, including Mr. Navalny, to jail or into exile.Supporters of the Liberal Democratic Party at a meeting in Moscow on Monday.Valery SharifulinTASS, via Getty ImagesCrossing Off NamesIf more subtle methods aren’t enough, there is the blunt instrument of knocking candidates off the ballot.This summer, the authorities barred the vast majority of candidates — 163 out of 174 — who had applied to run for Parliament as independents. They accused them of things like keeping foreign bank accounts or faking signatures needed to get on the ballot.Laws permitting such abusive practices have expanded over the years, beginning with Mr. Putin’s return to the presidency in 2012 after a four-year hiatus as prime minister.A law allowing the designation of nongovernmental groups as “performing the function of a foreign agent” was passed in 2012 and then expanded in 2017 to cover news media organizations. Its application this summer squelched independent news outlets like Meduza, Proyekt and Dozhd television. A 2015 amendment to the law had allowed groups to be designated “undesirable organizations,” with additional restrictions.This year, Mr. Putin expanded Russia’s strict anti-extremism legislation, first enacted as counterterrorism measures, to apply to opposition political figures in Mr. Navalny’s organization.Aleksey A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, at a court hearing in January. He has since been sent to a penal colony.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times‘Walking-Around Money’Following a practice once widespread in the United States of buying voters’ loyalty by offering “walking-around money,” the Russian government typically offers one-off payments to soldiers, public sector workers and retirees a few weeks before the election.This year, members of the security services received 15,000 rubles, about $205, and retirees and parents of school-age children 10,000 rubles. The series of presidential orders behind them, signed in July and August, specified payments in September — on the eve of the vote.The payouts have been glorified in pro-government campaign advertising. One ad, narrated by the girlfriend of a soldier, says that, “After our president signed a decree on one-time payments to soldiers, cadets and police officers, I feel confident about my future.”In Moscow in June. The Kremlin provides “walking-around money” to many voters — one-time payments aimed at buying allegiance.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesNot-so-secret BallotsRussia allows online voting, and numerous companies have arranged for employees to vote on computers set up by the human resources departments.Critics say this intimidates voters by potentially making their choices known to their bosses.Regulating the InternetThis summer, the authorities banned about four dozen websites affiliated with Mr. Navalny’s movement that were promoting his voting guide for the elections. The strategy, which he calls smart voting, essentially involves having opposition voters coalesce around the strongest anti-Kremin candidate in each race.On Friday, those plans were derailed as the remaining app the Navalny forces planned to use was deleted from the Google and Apple app stores after the Kremlin threatened their employees in Russia with arrest.Earlier, the Russian authorities had tried subtler approaches. Recently, for example, a company in southern Russia that sells wool registered “smart voting” as a commercial trademark.It then sued Google and Yandex, a Russian search engine, charging that they had violated its trademark rights and demanding that they block sites showing Mr. Navalny’s voting guides. A Russian court quickly ruled in the company’s favor.Opposition CountermovesA high-stakes cat-and-mouse game has sprung up as the “non-systemic” opposition has sought to subvert the government’s tactics.Opposition candidates who are in jail or prohibited by court rulings from attending public events have appeared instead as life-size cardboard cutouts. One jailed candidate, Andrei Pivovarov, has run entirely as a cardboard cutout propped up in his campaign office in the southern city of Krasnodar.Barred from attending public events, Andrei Pivovarov is campaigning as a cardboard cutout in Krasnodar.Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Navalny’s group had said that it expected its “smart voting” strategy to win a seat in Parliament for at least one opposition politician, and possibly as many as 20.Now, with the deletion of the app from the Google and Apple stores, that goal would seem to be unattainable, keeping alive the Kremlin’s dubious record in elections: Since 2016, no members of the “non-systemic” opposition have served in the 450-seat body.Alina Lobzina contributed reporting. More

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      Apple and Google Remove ‘Navalny’ Voting App in Russia

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      The app, from the Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny, vanished from online stores as polls opened in the parliamentary election it was designed to sway.MOSCOW — An app designed by Russian activists to coordinate protest voting in this weekend’s elections disappeared from the Google and Apple app stores in the country on Friday, a major blow to the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny and allies who hoped to subvert the commanding position of President Vladimir V. Putin’s governing party.Google removed the app Friday morning after the Russian authorities issued a direct threat of criminal prosecution against the company’s staff in the country, naming specific individuals, according to a person familiar with the company’s decision. The move comes one day after a Russian lawmaker raised the prospect of retribution against employees of the two technology companies, saying they would be “punished.”The person declined to be identified for fear of angering the Russian government.On Friday Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said, “That app is illegal” when asked about it on his regular call with journalists. “Both platforms have been notified and in accordance with the law they made these decisions, as it seems,’’ he said.Apple did not respond to requests for comment about the availability of the Navalny app in its store.The app disappeared just as voting got underway in the three-day parliamentary election, in which Mr. Navalny’s team was hoping to use its app — called “Navalny” — to consolidate the opposition vote in each of Russia’s 225 electoral districts.“Removing the Navalny app from stores is a shameful act of political censorship,” an aide to Mr. Navalny, Ivan Zhdanov, said on Twitter. “Russia’s authoritarian government and propaganda will be thrilled.”A polling station in Vladivostok, in eastern Russia, on Friday as voting in the parliamentary election began.Pavel Korolyov/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMaintaining open, uncensored access to their services, especially in authoritarian countries, is becoming one of the most vexing challenges for American tech companies like Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter. In countries such as India, Myanmar and Turkey, the authorities are increasingly pressuring the companies to censor certain political speech, or ordering internet outages to block access to the web.Civil society groups have warned that forcing the companies to conform to a patchwork of laws and regulations risks creating a more fractured internet, where the products and services available to people will depend on where they are.The threat to prosecute local employees is an escalation by the Kremlin as it seeks to induce Western tech giants to fall in line with a broader internet crackdown. The country’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, has repeatedly demanded that the companies remove certain content, on pain of fines or restrictions on access to their products. The government says that American internet companies are meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs by allowing anti-Kremlin activists to use their platforms freely; Mr. Navalny’s movement was outlawed as extremist this summer.The Russian government had been increasingly blunt in recent days about its willingness to use threats to prevent the use of the app. “With the participation of Apple and Google, specific crimes are being committed, the scale of which may only increase in the coming days,” Vladimir Dzhabarov, a member of Russia’s upper house of Parliament, said on Thursday. “Individuals contributing to their parent companies’ evasion of responsibility on the territory of the Russian Federation will be punished.”Bailiffs visited Google’s offices earlier this week seeking to enforce court-ordered measures against the protest voting campaign, state media reported.Russian authorities have been pressuring Apple and Google for weeks to remove the Navalny team’s voting app. With Mr. Navalny’s websites blocked inside Russia, the app became a loophole allowing exiled allies of the imprisoned politician to continue to reach a wide audience. Nearly every smartphone runs Apple’s iOS or Google’s Android operating system, making their app stores the key artery for getting any product to the public.The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned the American ambassador to Moscow, John J. Sullivan, last week and announced that “American ‘digital giants’” had broken Russian law “in the context of the preparation and conduct of the elections.”“The patience of the Russian side, which for now has refrained from putting up barriers to American business in Russia, is not unlimited,” the Foreign Ministry’s spokeswoman, Maria V. Zakharova, warned on Thursday.Aleksei A. Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, at a court hearing in January.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe “Navalny” app is central to a protest-vote strategy that the opposition leader calls “smart voting.” Elections in Russia are not free and fair, but the Kremlin still seeks the sheen of popular legitimacy by holding elections in which a stable of dull parties typically splits the opposition vote.The Navalny strategy, first deployed regionally in 2019, seeks to turn that system of “managed democracy” against Mr. Putin. The goal is to defeat as many candidates representing the governing United Russia party as possible by having all opposition-minded voters in each district pick the same challenger — whether or not they agree with their views. The “Navalny” app coordinates the process, requesting a user’s address and responding with the name of the candidate they should vote for.The Navalny team on Friday said they would seek to get the names of their “smart voting” picks out by alternate methods, such as automated responses in the messaging app Telegram. But they voiced anger at Apple and Google for apparently folding to Kremlin pressure.“This shameful day will long remain in history,” Leonid Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s longtime chief of staff, wrote on his Telegram account.Anton Troianovski More

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      As Russian Election Nears, Voters Voice Resignation, Anger and Fear

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      Many in Russia say they are fed up with corruption, stagnant wages and rising prices. But they worry, as one man said, that “if things start to change, there will be blood.”She walked into the cafe wearing a face mask that read, “I’m not afraid, and don’t you be afraid.” A man in a leather jacket followed her in, looked at her as she sat down next to me, then disappeared. Another man, in a vest and gray cap, waited outside.He trailed us as we walked out.I was interviewing Violetta Grudina, an activist in the Russian Arctic city of Murmansk who is allied with the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny. She was still recovering from a hunger strike. Now under relentless surveillance, she confessed to a creeping, numbing desperation.“We are all in a trap — trapped by one tyrant,” Ms. Grudina said. “This stupor that comes from giving everything you possibly can, but nothing changes — it is hard.”Russia is a country in which nothing changes until everything changes. Ahead of the national parliamentary elections this weekend, President Vladimir V. Putin’s rule has reached a new apogee of authoritarianism, coated in a patina of comfortable stability. To many, Mr. Putin remains a hero, especially for his assertive foreign policy, while those who oppose him are retreating, as they put it, into their own oases or parallel worlds. More