According to the polls of June 2015, Russian approval rate of President Vladimir Putin reached a historic high of 89%.
Russian President Vladimir Putin
Shipilov informed his readers about his recent visits to two social gatherings. Both gatherings were attended by so called “patriotic” Russians, those, by Shipilov’s words, who “will tear anyone’s throat for the ‘Great Russia’.
Both of the otherwise very different groups were convinced of the great special mission of Russia, convinced that Russia eventually would conquer the rest of the world. What surprised Shipilov was that the participants of the both groups actively disliked Putin.
The participants of the first group were representatives of the Russian political elite, “people whose decisions and whims”, by Shipilov’s words. “really affect the lives of many Russians”.
The mood of these people was extremely pessimistic. According to Shipilov “among them there was complete and absolutely sober understanding and vision of the current situation”. They had no doubt that “everyone and everything in Russia went kaput”, implying, however, the word “all” are “everybody but us.” People, being among their own peers, talked about everything very frankly, and told Shipilov what he could blog about to the public, and what not.
The main topic of their conversation hovered around whether it is still possible to rectify the current situation; or just to flee abroad if they won’t be able to fix it. This company hated Putin with passionate hatred as a person who “pissed away all that was possible to piss away”. They spoke of him only as if deceased, still alive just by misunderstanding.
Everyone agreed that probably it was impossible to improve the situation, but they must try it anyway. They thought that it was safer for them to stay at this point in Russia, in the fear that Western governments could confiscate all their foreign properties at any moment. So it seemed to be better to try to live with the situation in Russia under their control, to put on the brakes, and to make all possible concessions to the West. Then to get help from the West, for the restoration of democratic Russia and raise and strengthen the economy.
And when the West would start trusting them, to return to their fight for the Russian world dominance all over again, and with renewed vigor.
Cutting Russian participation in SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is the expected new sanction, which rich Russians afraid of the most of all. As I understand it, only citizens of countries that belong to SWIFT can make international transfers of their money using their banks.
But a few of them believed that this “optimistic” scenario is realistic. What all of the participants of the gathering really cared about was that SWIFT will not be cut off suddenly, that they had at least a little time to move to the West what is left of their riches in Russia.
But right now, they didn’t want to do it in a hurry, they hoped there were still enough possibilities to gain more in Russia.
“And I realized” wrote Andrey Shipilov, “that disabling SWIFT can really be the last day of the Russian Federation, a ‘final conclusion’, accompanied by disasters, destruction, virtual and real mountains of corpses”.
Members of the middle class gathered at the second party attended by Andrey Shipilov were “middle and high-level managers, realtors, journalists from news agencies, financial analysts, lawyers, office plankton – in short, those who can still afford to buy two weeks in five-star hotel in Cyprus”.
Here, too, everybody loved Russia above all and everybody knew very well who are Russia’s enemies: the United States, Europe and the Ukrainian Nazis. And everyone was very upset that the enemies want to take over Russia, to seize its wealth and resources and put Russia on her knees, and that Putin could not give Russia’s enemies a serious rebuff.
No one in that company could forgive Putin for him actually turning out to be a wimp, and besides, being when it came to the economy and the law, ignorant to such a degree that the stupidity of his remarks was clear not only to financial analysts and lawyers, but even to journalists.
All were willing to endure hardship: to eat just potatoes for the whole year, not to go abroad for their vacations, only if their deprivations were not in vein. But only if the result of these depravations, Europe and the United States will wash in blood and crawl on their knees to beg forgiveness, as Putin had promised.
And after a year that they did live without mozzarella, oysters and prosciutto, strangely enough, Europe with the United States are still alive, the bastards are blooming and smiling. Therefore no one in this company liked Putin. He keeps threatening to launch forty missiles, but only in words, in fact he even hadn’t managed to return the Baltic states back to Russia!
After reading Andrey Shipilov’s article I once again ask myself: Who are those 89% of Russians who approve Putin’s politics?
Of course I don’t know the answer.
Nevertheless, something does register on my memory. This “something” is a song about Putin performed by a Russian singer Mishania, the song which made famous this previously unknown girl, since an audience of almost three millions ‘enjoyed’ it on YouTube.
