BYW Yulia Latinina had a really weird op-ed on this in today's Moscow Times. For those not up on Russian punditry, she is a "liberal" (in the Russian sense of the term) who has a political talk show on the Echo of Moscow radio station. Anyway, the Kremlin is backing off in the face of the protests (as I expected it would; BTW this is something Yeltsin would never have done -- take public opinion into account? Perish the thought!) and she seems really mad about this.
Her op-ed's logic went like this: Putin is addressing the protestors' demands. When people protested Bush's inaugural, he did not address any of their demands. The US is a democracy. Therefore, in democracies, the state does not address protestors' demands. Since Moscow is addressing them, Russia is therefore not a democracy. ===== Nu, zayats, pogodi! __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! http://my.yahoo.com
