Rural Russians protest being treated as 2nd-class citizens
URDOMA, RUSSIA — Russia’s countryside and smaller cities have long been fertile ground for President Vladimir Putin and his message of restoring bygone greatness, but even here, there are limits.
Plans to ship Moscow’s garbage to the provinces — abetted by secrecy, trickery and bending the law — have set off widespread protests. Underlying this winter of Russian discontent are deepening economic woes and a popular view that the government pours money into the glittering capital while squeezing the struggling hinterlands.
It was only by chance that residents of Urdoma, 700 miles northeast of Moscow, learned last year of an enor- mous landfill project nearby, when two local hunters stum- bled onto workers felling lofty pine and birch trees to make way for it. The news galvanized Urdoma and dozens of other communities nestled among the forests of Arkhangelsk province, and hardened attitudes toward the government.
“All raw materials — oil, gas, diamonds, timber — it all comes from here and is sold abroad, while the prof- its go to Moscow,” said Yuri Dezhin, a 41-year-old hunter living in a small trailer that protesters set up to monitor activity on the landfill site. “We get nothing.”
Polling shows that support for Putin is slipping, and for the first time in 13 years, a plurality of Russians think their country is moving in the wrong direction. Far removed from urban activists who protest government autocracy, public opi n ion h as shifted most sharply in provincial areas, where Putin’s popularity has stemmed from economic gains as much as from national pride.
The government has made changes that are deeply unpopular nationwide, like raising the retirement age and increasing sales taxes and utility fees. Inflation-adjusted incomes have dropped about 11 percent over five years; a move in January by Russian producers to sell nine eggs at the price of 10 generated a storm of mocking tweets.
In Urdoma, population 4,750, and other towns in the region, residents say that the governor has sold their idyll to garbage interests, and the government — all the way up to Putin’s office — has rebuffed their quest for answers.
“They try to brush us away like so many flies,” said Lyudmila Marina, a retired head of the local administration.
So far, Putin has shown few signs that the disaffec- tion worries him, but a continued decline in support could present a long-term problem for him. Term limits require that he surrender the presidency in 2024, and he would need popular support to push through any change to extend his rule.
For now, the question is how the disenchanted will channel their grievances, and what Putin will do about it.
The cost of joining public protests against the government can be high. In January, Anastasia Shevchenko, a human-rights campaigner for the opposition group Open Russia, was arrested in Rostov-on-Don, in southern Russia, on charges of working for an “undesirable organization.” Her teenage daughter died within days from respiratory problems, with Shevchenko allowed to go to her child’s bedside only at the last moment.
Protesting about garbage is considered a safer alternative. Yet broader political discontent simmered through scores of demonstrations held across Russia this month against rising garbage collection fees.
A late January poll by the Levada Center, an independent Russian polling organization, showed that 45 percent of Russians thought the country was headed in the wrong direction, while 42 percent thought its course was correct, a sharp downturn from a year earlier.
Approval of Putin’s job performance stands at 64 percent, with disapproval at 34 percent. Any Western politician would love such numbers, but a year ago, the Russian leader had an 80 percent approval rating.