Russian President Vladimir Putin's leading opponent in next month's presidential elections has accused the Kremlin of orchestrating a vicious media onslaught which has compared him to Adolf Hitler, made lurid charges about his sex life, and said he is funded by some of the businessmen against whom his campaign is focused.
Sergei Glazyev, who is trying to create a social democratic alternative in Russia, has been targeted by three acidic personal attacks in the media.
"Dirty tricks are the Kremlin's only weapon," he told a group of British journalists. "The Kremlin bureaucracy's idea is to have total control of the political scene. They are afraid of competition. They don't want democracy. The Kremlin organized a tender between public relations companies to produce the best lies."
A Kremlin spokesman haughtily dismissed the allegations, saying Putin's high poll ratings showed Kremlin officials could not be involved.
The tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda accused Glazyev of being funded by the London-based tycoon Boris Berezovsky. Similar accusations appeared yesterday in another large-circulation paper, Moskovsky Komsomlets, calling his candidacy, which advocates higher taxes on big business, "the last hope of the oligarchs."
Glazyev has also been depicted with a Hitler moustache on the cover of the glossy magazine Kompromat, which devotes a 66-page special edition to a detailed character assassination, including wild slurs that he has fathered four children outside marriage.
Sergei Solokov, the editor of Kompromat, which regularly targets prominent Russians, denied having links with the Kremlin. "If we did, then perhaps we would not be in court quite so much," he said.
But he conceded that he had no plans to write about Putin or the other candidates before the election. An economist and former trade minister who broke with the neo-liberal consensus a decade ago, Glazyev joined the Communist party in the hope of transforming it into a social democratic force on the pattern of the rest of eastern Europe.
When the Communists, under their veteran leader, Gennady Zyuganov, declined, Glazyev left and turned to nationalist groups for allies with whom to create the new party Rodina (Motherland). It got a surprising 9 percent in the December elections.
Some Kremlin officials initially supported it as a device to take votes from the Communists and speed their long-term decline.
Glazyev conceded on Thursday that he had discussed Rodina's approach with Putin at a Kremlin meeting last autumn, but "speculation that it was born in the Kremlin is not true. We need to establish social democracy which will combine the European experience of the welfare state with Russian traditions," he said.
Four people jailed in the landmark Hong Kong national security trial of "47 democrats" accused of conspiracy to commit subversion were freed today after more than four years behind bars, the second group to be released in a month. Among those freed was long-time political and LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham (岑子杰), who also led one of Hong Kong’s largest pro-democracy groups, the Civil Human Rights Front, which disbanded in 2021. "Let me spend some time with my family," Sham said after arriving at his home in the Kowloon district of Jordan. "I don’t know how to plan ahead because, to me, it feels
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
RSS