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    After Time in U.S. Prisons, Maria Butina Now Sits in Russia's Parliament

    Maria Butina, convicted of serving as an unregistered foreign agent before and after the 2016 election, insists she “wasn’t a spy” and that her Duma seat is “not a reward.” Her critics call her a Kremlin “trophy.”MOSCOW — When Russia’s lower house of Parliament, or Duma, assembled last month for the first time following elections in September, one of its newest members was a name more familiar in the United States than in her home country.Maria V. Butina made headlines across America when she was convicted three years ago of operating as an unregistered foreign agent trying to infiltrate influential conservative political circles before and after the 2016 election.She is now focused on playing a prominent role in Russia’s political system — through legal means this time, and with the support of President Vladimir V. Putin’s United Russia party.Ms. Butina, 33, who returned to Russia in October 2019 after spending 15 months in several U.S. penitentiaries, including four months in solitary confinement, now represents the impoverished Kirov region in the Duma.Her critics have characterized her rapid political rise as a thank you from the Kremlin, a claim she rejects.“It’s not a reward,” Ms. Butina said in an interview at a cafe in central Moscow near where she lives. “I wasn’t a spy. I wasn’t working for the government. I was just a civilian.”But in December 2018, Ms. Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring, under the direction of a Russian official, to “establish unofficial lines of communication” with high-level Republicans on behalf of Russia’s government from 2015 to 2017.Prosecutors said she had tried to broker a meeting between then-candidate Donald J. Trump and Mr. Putin during the 2016 presidential campaign, and the judge at her sentencing hearing noted she had been sending political reports to Russia at the same time Russian intelligence operatives were trying to sway the election.Since coming home, Ms. Butina has used her experiences with Washington insiders — and the time she spent in prison — to cast herself as an expert on both America and penal systems.That was evident in April when she ambushed Russia’s most famous political prisoner, the opposition politician Aleksei A. Navalny, on a surprise visit to the penal colony where he is held and which is notorious for harsh treatment.Granted access as part of a civilian monitoring program, Ms. Butina favorably compared Mr. Navalny’s conditions to the U.S. prisons where she had served time.In a widely seen video broadcast by the state-owned Rossiya-24 television network, she said she was impressed by the facility’s food and medical services. Then she confronted Mr. Navalny, who at the time of her visit was one week into a 24-day hunger strike declared because he had been denied medical treatment for severe pain in his back and right leg.“You can walk normally,” Ms. Butina tells Mr. Navalny, who did not consent to be filmed.Mr. Navalny repeated to her that he was being denied access to his doctor, and walked off.“I don’t judge Navalny. I said in that video what I saw,” Ms. Butina said in her interview.Since coming home, Ms. Butina has used her experiences with Washington insiders — and the time she spent in prison — to cast herself as an expert on both America and penal system.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMaria Pevchikh, who heads the investigative unit of Mr. Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, said she believed Ms. Butina’s Duma seat was a gift not for her activities in the United States, but for her harassment of Mr. Navalny. He had embarrassed Mr. Putin by exposing the government’s plot to kill him, and revealing the luxurious nature of a Black Sea palace believed to be purpose built for the Russian president.“If anything, this was a reward for what she did by visiting Navalny in prison, and that TV episode, which was highly embarrassing and disgusting,” Ms. Pevchikh said. “Not many people would agree to do that. And she did.”In the United States, Ms. Butina’s case was treated like the plot of a Cold War thriller, and her love life — including a relationship with a Republican operative, Paul Erickson, whom she met in Russia in 2013 and who would later be convicted of financial crimes and pardoned by Mr. Trump — was dissected in lurid detail on cable news.In Russia, however, the pro-government media portrayed her story as a miscarriage of justice. Ms. Butina was seen as a scapegoat for Democrats’ failure to come to grips with Mr. Trump’s victory. Russia’s Foreign Ministry said it exemplified America’s rampant “Russophobia.” Over a caviar-laden meal at a restaurant featuring cuisine from her native Siberia, Ms. Butina insisted that she wanted to use her new status as a national lawmaker to improve relations between Washington and Moscow.“I believed in the friendship between the two nations, and I still do believe in it,” said Ms Butina. “We can be friends, we must be.”Yet in her frequent TV appearances and on social media, she has been outspoken in her criticisms of America, especially when it comes to meddling in the affairs of other countries and race relations.“She is quite a good trophy” for the ruling party, Ms. Pevchikh said. “Just talking nonstop about how bad things in America are.”Ahead of the recent Duma elections, she published a post about U.S. interference in foreign elections during the Cold War on Telegram, the social-media platform. “Their logic is that the U.S. can intervene in the elections of other countries, but Russia cannot,” she wrote.Ms. Butina, who worked before joining the Duma for RT, a government-backed television channel, frequently comments on systemic racism in America, as pro-Kremlin figures have done for decades.In October 2020, Ms. Butina published a memoir, “Prison Diaries,” which discusses how her imprisonment affected her political views.While her time in prison did not make her any less of a gun-rights advocate — she said losing her lifetime N.R.A. membership particularly stung — it did diminish her affinity for the Republican Party, she said, as she witnessed America’s structural inequality first hand.Much of the book explores her experiences with Black inmates, and she said her time in prison had broken down a lot of stereotypes she had once held — and showed her how racist the views were of many of those American influencers she had been close to.Ms. Butina wants to use her new Duma platform to help Russians imprisoned abroad, saying she was eager to campaign against solitary confinement and torture. But when she was asked about a recent leaked cache of graphic videos that purported to show torture and rape in Russian prisons, Ms. Butina hesitated to comment, saying they needed to be verified.Some of the Russian figures she has publicly supported include the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death.”In October 2020, Ms. Butina published a memoir, “Prison Diaries,” in which she detailed her four months in solitary confinement.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesMs. Butina, who during her time in the United States earned a master’s degree in international relations, with a focus on cybersecurity, from American University in Washington, continues to be highly active on social media. That was certainly the case in the United States, too, before she attracted the attention of F.B.I. investigators with her photographs with prominent Republicans like Donald Trump Jr., Rick Santorum and Scott Walker, as well as the N.R.A.’s leader, Wayne LaPierre.Her connection to Russian government figures predates both her time in the Duma, and the United States. She arrived in Moscow from her native Siberian city of Barnaul in 2011 and soon after was hired as special assistant by a Russian senator, Aleksandr P. Torshin, an influential member of United Russia who later would become deputy governor of Russia’s Central Bank.Still, in Russia, she is not a well-known personality, said Andrei Pertsev, a political journalist with the independent news outlet Meduza.“The broad masses do not know her,” he said.Ms. Butina was now just one among many “propagandists” in the 450-member Duma, Mr. Pertsev said, adding that in his view her elevation to the body — her seat was given to her by the governor of the Kirov region — was a way for the government to imbue her statements against America with more heft.With her new job, “it is as if the speaker’s status rises, and these things, they sound more weighty,” said Mr. Pertsev, who shares something unwelcome in common with Ms. Butina.His media outlet, Meduza, was designated a “foreign agent” by Russian authorities earlier this year, a charge that echoes the one against Ms. Butina, who failed to register her activities with the Justice Department as required by U.S. law.But in Russia, the foreign agent label is primarily wielded against Russian citizens engaged in independent journalism or human rights work, and it has been increasingly applied to organizations and individuals whose work displeases the Kremlin.“Don’t compare our law with your law,” Ms. Butina said, adding that she found the Russian law less onerous in its requirements than the American one.As part of her U.S. plea deal, Ms. Butina had to admit to being part of an organized effort, backed by Russian officials, to persuade powerful conservatives that Russia should be counted as friend, not foe.During her defense, her American lawyers argued in court that Ms. Butina’s efforts had been well-intentioned and stressed that she had never tried to hide what she called her “diplomacy project.” Back in Russia, she denies ever having been part of a broader plot and insists she acted on her own.“If I had known that I have to register to build peace between the two nations by my own initiative,” she said, “I would have loved to.”Alina Lobzina contributed reporting. More

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    Russian source for Steele’s Trump dossier arrested by US authorities

    Trump-Russia investigationRussian source for Steele’s Trump dossier arrested by US authoritiesFive-page indictment released by justice department accuses analyst Igor Danchenko of lying to FBI Luke HardingThu 4 Nov 2021 15.34 EDTLast modified on Thu 4 Nov 2021 16.33 EDTA Russian analyst who was the main source for Christopher Steele’s dossier on Donald Trump and Moscow has been arrested by US authorities, the justice department said on Thursday.Igor Danchenko now faces charges as part of the investigation by John Durham, the special counsel appointed by the Trump administration to examine the origins of the FBI’s investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.Danchenko collected much of the intelligence behind Steele’s dossier during three trips to Russia in summer and autumn 2016. He was the chief source behind its most incendiary allegation: that Trump was compromised during a trip to Moscow in November 2013 for the Miss Universe beauty pageant.Trump has vehemently denied the claim. Last summer, however, a report by the Senate intelligence committee said that the FSB spy agency presided over a network of secret cameras inside the Ritz-Carlton hotel where Trump stayed, including in guest bedrooms. An FSB intelligence officer was permanently on site, it said.Trump in Moscow: what happened at Miss Universe in 2013Read moreThe five-page indictment released on Thursday accuses Danchenko of lying repeatedly to the FBI when interviewed in 2017 – a criminal offense. These include over his dealings with an unnamed US PR executive with close links to the Democrats. The executive’s information found its way into some of the dossier’s memos, a fact Danchenko allegedly concealed.The FBI further accuses Danchenko of making up a conversation with Sergei Millian, a Russian American property broker with links to Trump, who appears in the dossier as “source D”. He appears to have been credited by Danchenko with the claim that Trump watched sex workers perform “golden showers” by urinating on each other at the hotel. In 2019, the special counsel Robert Mueller said no criminal wrongdoing had taken place between the Trump campaign and Moscow. But Mueller noted that there were multiple contacts in 2016 between Russian spies and Trump aides. The Kremlin had run a “sweeping and systemic” operation to help Trump win, Mueller said.Trump’s justice department claimed the former president was the victim of a witch-hunt. It repeatedly cited the dossier as evidence that the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s relations with Russia was biased and unfair. But the FBI investigation began independently from the dossier, after it emerged Moscow had hacked thousands of Democratic party emails.Democrats believe Durham’s inquiries to be politically driven. But so far the Biden administration has not tried to stop him. Danchenko is the third person, and second in a two-month span, to face indictment with five separate counts on Thursday of lying. In September cybersecurity lawyer, Michael Sussmann was also accused of lying to the FBI.Speaking to the Guardian in October, Danchenko, who is based in Washington DC, defended his work on the dossier. “I stand by it,” he said. He said he did not resile from explosive allegations that Trump may have been secretly filmed with sex workers during his Moscow trip. “I got it right,” he declared.He said the “salacious” material in the dossier formed a small part of a 35-page document. The allegation would be “amusing”, he said, were it not for the fact that any covert FSB recording might be used for blackmail purposes. Trump’s false ‘Russian spy’ claims put me in danger, says Steele dossier sourceRead moreThe bipartisan report by the Senate intelligence committee was dismissive of Steele’s dossier, but corroborated key elements in it. It laid out multiple contacts between Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager who features in the dossier, and Konstantin Kilimnik, described as a Russian intelligence officer. Speaking last year Danchenko said a campaign against him by leading Republicans was designed to deflect from the damaging Senate report. It included claims – which he denies – he was a Russian spy. “I think they thought I would be an easy target to discredit the dossier. By doubling down on this they would be able to discredit the whole Russia investigation,” he said.During his interviews with the FBI, Danchenko appeared to downplay the reliability of his own information – a point seized upon by Republican commentators. According to the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, Danchenko told the bureau his work with sub-sources in Russia amounted to “hearsay” and “conversation had with friends over beers”. Statements about Trump’s sexual activities were “jest”, he said. A lawyer for Danchenko had no immediate comment.TopicsTrump-Russia investigationTrump administrationRussiaDonald TrumpEuropeUS politicsFBInewsReuse this content More

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    Trump response to Capitol attack can’t be ‘swept under rug’, White House says – live

    Key events

    Show

    5.45pm EDT
    17:45

    Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

    5.02pm EDT
    17:02

    Today so far

    4.47pm EDT
    16:47

    Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

    3.33pm EDT
    15:33

    Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

    2.29pm EDT
    14:29

    ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

    2.07pm EDT
    14:07

    Trump’s response to Capitol attack cannot be ‘swept under the rug,’ Psaki says

    12.31pm EDT
    12:31

    Interim summary

    Live feed

    Show

    5.45pm EDT
    17:45

    Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

    Sam Levine

    Texas Republicans are on the verge of enacting new voting maps that would entrench the state’s Republican and white majority even as its non-white population grows rapidly.
    Texas Republicans approved the congressional plan on Monday evening, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure.
    The Texas maps offer perhaps the most brazen effort in the USs so far this year to draw new district lines to benefit one political party, a practice called gerrymandering. The proposed congressional map would blunt growing Democratic strength in the Texas suburbs. Texas Republicans already have a 23-13 seat advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and the new maps would double the number of safe GOP congressional seats in the state from 11 to 22, according to the Washington Post.
    Democrats would have 12 safe seats, up from eight. There would be just one competitive congressional district in the state, down from 12.
    Read more:

    5.14pm EDT
    17:14

    The Supreme Court has declined to stop a vaccine requirement for health workers in Maine.
    Justice Stephen Breyer declined to hear an emergency appeal to block a vaccine requirement announced by Maine governor Janet Mills. The policy requires health workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 29 October or risk losing their jobs.
    According to the state’s dashboard tracking vaccinations among health workers, between 84 and 92% of workers are vaccinated in various settings so far.
    This is the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a statewide vaccine mandate.

    5.02pm EDT
    17:02

    Today so far

    That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
    Here’s where the day stands so far:

    The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is expected to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. The expected committee vote comes one day after Donald Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block certain White House documents from the subpoenas by claiming executive privilege, which is considered a dubious legal argument given that he is no longer president.
    The White House said Trump’s response to the insurrection cannot be “swept under the rug”. “Our view, and I think the view of the vast majority of Americans, is that former President Trump abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about Trump’s lawsuit. “The former president’s actions represented a unique and existential threat to our democracy that we don’t feel can be swept under the rug.”
    FBI agents raided a Washington home linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned by the treasury department in 2018.
    Progressive lawmakers voiced optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon. The president is now meeting with a group of centrist Democratic lawmakers to continue the negotiations over the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. Democrats are still working to reach an agreement on the top-line cost of the reconciliation package, and House progressives are holding up the passage of the infrastructure bill until a deal is struck.

    Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

    4.47pm EDT
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    Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

    Progressive lawmakers expressed optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon.
    Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the group had a “really good, productive meeting” with Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
    “And I think we all feel still even more optimistic about getting to an agreement on a really transformational bill,” Jayapal told reporters after the meeting.
    Jayapal said she was confident that “a majority” of progressive priorities would be included in the final bill, and she thanked Biden for his engagement in the negotiations.
    When asked if they agreed to a top-line cost of the bill, Jayapal said that Biden has consistently pushed for a price tag between $1.9tn and $2.2tn, after moderates like Joe Manchin indicated they would not support a $3.5tn package.
    “It’s not the number that we want,” Jayapal said. “But at the end of the day, the idea that we can do these programs, a multitude of programs and actually get them going so that they deliver immediate transformational benefits to people is what we’re focused on.”

    4.24pm EDT
    16:24

    Joe Biden’s first meeting with congressional Democrats has now ended after about two hours, according to the White House.
    The president’s first meeting was with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Vice-president Kamala Harris and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen attended as well.
    Biden will now meet with some of the centrist Democrats in Congress to continue discussions about the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

    Updated
    at 4.35pm EDT

    4.04pm EDT
    16:04

    Gloria Oladipo

    In an attempt to recruit more officers, US Capitol police chief Thomas Manger is using the 6 January insurrection as a reason for why more people should join the force.
    As seen in a promotional video titled The US Capitol Police: A Call to Service, Manger describes how the attack, which many have cited as a failure on the part of Capitol law enforcement, made him want to once again join the force.

    U.S. Capitol Police
    (@CapitolPolice)
    One of our top priorities is to hire more officers to protect Congress and the U.S. Capitol: pic.twitter.com/xbKBOhmNpz

    October 19, 2021

    “I wanted to be a police officer again. I wanted to be there to help. We are looking for really good men and women who have that spirit for public service, who want to serve their country,” said Manger in the video.
    Following the insurrection, officers testified during a House committee about the events of 6 January, describing being swarmed and attacked by rioters as well as the trauma they dealt with.

    Updated
    at 4.35pm EDT

    3.33pm EDT
    15:33

    Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

    Gloria Oladipo

    US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, according to DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa.
    “Secretary Mayorkas tested positive this morning for the Covid-19 virus after taking a test as part of routine pre-travel protocols. Secretary Mayorkas is experiencing only mild congestion; he is fully vaccinated and will isolate and work at home per CDC protocols and medical advice. Contact tracing is underway,” said Espinosa in a statement to CNN.
    Mayorkas will no longer be participating in a planned trip to Colombia with secretary of state Antony Blinken and will be working from home, reports CNN.

    Updated
    at 4.44pm EDT

    3.19pm EDT
    15:19

    Gloria Oladipo

    An FBI spokesperson has said that the agency is conducting law enforcement activity in a New York City building in connection with an investigation into Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch whose Washington, DC home was raided today, according to ABC news.
    Stay tuned as more information emerges.

    3.13pm EDT
    15:13

    Gloria Oladipo

    House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland discussed the best strategy for Democrats to pass the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, arguing that lawmakers should fund fewer programs for longer, reports Politico.
    “My own view is that we ought to do fewer things better. We ought to make sure that which [programs] we include in the bill will have a real impact,” said Hoyer.
    Hoyer added that he wants “sense of permanency to those policies” that make it in the final version of the financial bill.
    Democrats are still working to get the megabill passed before a self-imposed deadline of 31 October but face opposition from key moderates such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Lawmakers including House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have supported the idea of funding fewer programs, but contention remains around which programs will get cut, including threats to key climate change legislation.
    Hoyer added that Democrats are still aiming towards passing the social spending package and the infrastructure bill by the Halloween deadline and that “if [Congress] make significant progress that’ll also be success towards those ends.”

    2.53pm EDT
    14:53

    Gloria Oladipo

    Five people with the climate activist group Sunrise Movement will begin participating in a hunger strike in front of the White House tomorrow at 9am to demand that Congress pass the climate initiatives in the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, a key part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, reports the New Republic.
    “We’re here to highlight how dire this moment is,” said Kidus Girma, 26, who is participating in the strike. “A couple hundred people in a two-part building in D.C. are deciding the scope of what climate justice can look like—and not just climate justice, but a lot of critical programs that before this pandemic folks did not think were possible.”
    Protestors decided to strike after news broke from the New York Times on Friday that Democrats were considering getting rid of the Clean Energy Payment Program, an initiative that would award utilities who increase their use of renewable energy, because of holdout from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other centrists.
    The hunger strike is apart of a longer week of actions targeting key Democrats who have not supported the legislation. Yesterday, Sunrise activists previously protested outside of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona’s Phoenix office. Protestors have also previously protested by Manchin’s yatch.
    Protestors are asking people to participate in the hunger strike on Thursday, followed by a nationwide strike from school–coined Fridays for Future–that will result in a break in fasting.

    Updated
    at 2.53pm EDT

    2.29pm EDT
    14:29

    ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

    Joanna Walters

    In further developments in the story of Russian metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska, FBI agents have raided a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Washington, DC, that is linked to him.
    Deripaska has ties to the Kremlin and Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former election campaign manager who served time for fraud and was pardoned by the former president. More

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    In Russia Election Results, Online Votes Sweep Putin Opponents Aside

    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

    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

    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

    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