Kremlin Using Russian Community to ‘Manage Popular Anger’ but will Limit Its Activities Lest It Become a Threat to Putin, Russian Nationalist Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, May 10 – Aleksandr Bastrykhin, head of the Investigative Committee and a longtime friend of Vladimir Putin’s is “the unofficial patron” of the Russian Community organization, many observers believe. As such, he has sponsored this group’s rapid growth but will work to ensure that it doesn’t turn against the regime, Daniil Konstantinov says.

    Instead, the leading Russian nationalist activist and theoretician says, Bastrykhin and his aides will use the Russian Community as a way of managing the anger of the Russian people and directing it away from the kind of actions that could represent a direct threat to Putin and his government (svoboda.org/a/33410192.html).

    Whether the Kremlin will be able to do that remains to be seen, but it is almost certain that the Kremlin would move quickly to suppress the Russian Community as it has done with other Russian nationalist groups in the past if those around Putin suspected that it had grown to the point where it was becoming dangerous, Konstantinov says.