Spoof Videos Highlight Challenge Facing Putin

27th January 2012, 16:51

Five weeks before the Russian presidential elections, electricity is in the air with a very modern challenge to Vladimir Putin.

On one side of the spectrum - state run media is following MR Putin's every step on his election campaign.

On the other side - Alexey Navalny, a 35-year-old lawyer and blogger, is arranging a contest for the best video denouncing Mr Putin's party and regime.

One of the leaders of the contest is a video entitled They Have Stolen Our Country, which contains parts of programmes aired by Russian state-run TV channels promising, among others things, the doubling of GDP and elimination of traffic jams.

The video contains deep sarcasm and paints a bleak future for Russia, all edited to a dramatic soundtrack.

The presenter asks where truth, freedom and justice have gone in Russia, and the answer to these questions is Mr Putin saying: "It sank."

Mr Putin's words "it sank", which are said with a half-smile, refer to the Kursk submarine which drowned during a military exercise, killing all 118 crew members.

The Kursk disaster in 2000 was the biggest challenge for Mr Putin, who was the then-new president.

Currently, though, his toughest task as he seeks re-election is to face anti-government protests warmed up by freedom of expression on the internet.

This freedom is something Russian authorities used to ignore - but they now fear it.

One of the state-run TV channels ordered Mr Navalny to delete the video as it contained part of its programme.

As a result, the video got re-posted again and again, and went viral.

It is one of the many instances when strict censorship reinforced on state TV just does not translate to the web.

The video also promotes another large anti-Putin protest scheduled for February 4.

The Central Election Commission has officially announced that the leader of the Yabloko party, Grigoriy Yavlinsky, who was among the organisers of the protests, will not be able to participate in the presidential race due to "legal problems".

Earlier, while on the campaign trail in Tomsk, Siberia, Mr Putin told Sky News he was "not concerned" about the recent mass protests calling for him to resign.

(c) Sky News 2012