Vladimir Putin addresses the Popular Front. Aleksei Navalny takes to the street. And Mikhail Prokorov takes a pass.
Both supporters and opponents of President Vladimir Putin mobilized their forces on the Russia Day national holiday this week.
One front gathered in Moscow’s ornate Manezh, just across from the Kremlin. In a tightly choreographed affair, they chanted "Russia! Russia!" and "Putin! Putin!" Another took to the streets, marching through the center of the capital chanting "Russia without Putin."
This week's edition of the Power Vertical podcast takes a look at Putin’s All-Russian Popular Front, which held its founding congress on June 12, and the 10,000-strong opposition protest that took place the same day. How did these dueling attempts by the regime and the opposition to respectively re-legitimize themselves before a weary public fare?
Joining me are co-hosts Mark Galeotti of New York University, Kirill Kobrin of RFE/RL’s Russian Service, and Sean Guillory or the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Russian and Eastern European Studies.
Also on the podcast, we discuss oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov’s decision not to run for Moscow mayor -- and anticorruption blogger Aleksei Navalny’s struggle to enter that race.
