Russian Ideologue Walks Out

Sergei Markov

Sergei Markov, a member of the Russian State Duma and deputy chairman of the Public Chamber's Committee For International Cooperation and Public Diplomacy, walked out during a live show of RFE/RL's Russian Service on August 26.

Markov took offense at frequent interruptions and what he called "provocations" by the radio host, uttered a Russian swear word, for which he was reprimanded by the host, and finally walked out.

Before taking off his headphones and leaving the studio, Markov, an ardent pro-Kremlin ideologue who worked for Viktor Yanukovych's election campaign in Ukraine in 2004 and, alongside spin doctors Gleb Pavlovsky and Mikhail Leontyev, has lectured members of the pro-Kremlin youth organization Nashi on "political technologies," said Russia has long lost its dominance in the CIS and is now encircled by a host of inimical regimes controlled by the United States.

"The Americans have formed a circle of hostile regimes around [Russia] that are controlled from the outside. [Those regimes] include Yushchenko, Saakashvili, the Baltics, and so on," he said.

"[Russia] should have intervened [in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine].... The budget for the Orange Revolution was colossal. If the budget for the Orange counterrevolution had been at least 10 times bigger, the counterrevolution would have won."

Markov blamed the armed conflict in Georgia on the United States and accused America of planning a civil war in Ukraine. "First, [U.S. Vice President Dick] Cheney threw the Georgian people under Russian tanks, knowing exactly how it would end," said Markov. "And now they are ready to throw the Ukrainian people in this furnace. They are ready now to provoke the maximum destabilization in Ukraine."

Answering a listener's question about why South Ossetia and Abkhazia should receive money from Moscow, Markov said,

"They are independent, but ours."

-- Pavel Butorin