Russian youths clash over support for Putin

MOSCOW — At first glance, it was just a fracas at a hotel.

Ilya Yashin, who works with the liberal political party Yabloko, was dumped face-first into a snowdrift and, he says, kicked by four toughs wearing warm-up suits.

It's possible it was not just a scuffle, but a preview of the coming political struggle for the hearts and minds of young Russians.

The incident occurred the weekend before last at a closed meeting of a new pro-Kremlin group, Nashi (Our Own), at a resort owned by Russia's presidential administration. Nashi, which announced its existence last Monday, is dedicated to fighting political extremism, its leader says.

"Our goals are anti-fascism, modernization and democracy," founder Vasily Yakemenko said last week.

Political analysts think Nashi has another, narrower aim: to promote the interests of President Vladimir Putin.

"The purpose of the group is to create a Putin youth movement, to physically prevent any demonstrations or meetings of anti-Putin organizations now being created in Russia, like Kmara in Georgia and Pora in Ukraine," said Andrei Piontkovsky, director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Moscow. "Putin and his regime are very much concerned" by the possibility of a peaceful, popular revolution.

Peaceful revolutions have occurred in the former Soviet republics of Georgia and Ukraine: In 2003, Protesters ousted Georgia's president, Eduard Shevardnadze. In December, Ukrainian protesters helped overturn a fraudulent vote and bring to power challenger Viktor Yushchenko.

For a time, political opposition in Russia seemed to have withered away. But a series of events beginning in the summer altered Putin's standing. His government was powerless to stop a series of bombings and hostage-takings, and it made futile efforts to help the pro-Russian presidential candidate in Ukraine. The government also has been the target of large protests by pensioners, whose benefits were cut.

Putin, although still popular, no longer seems politically unassailable. In the past two months, he has been the target of criticism from a top economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, and former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov. His approval rating has fallen from a high of 84 percent in December 2003 to 65 percent in January, according to polls by the Levada Center.

Under the constitution, Putin can't run again when his second four-year term expires in 2008. But some critics predict he will try to remain Russia's leader by shifting most of his powers to the office of prime minister and assuming that post.

Yashin says he is convinced Nashi is a creature of the Kremlin and is intended to generate support for the president.

"Although we don't have any documentary evidence, we believe Nashi is definitely a Kremlin organization," the 21-year-old activist said, sitting in his basement office next to a poster of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. "Russia has an authoritarian regime. This Nashi movement is just one part of the whole system."

Nashi's founder Yakemenko, who once worked in the Kremlin, is also leader of the pro-Putin youth group Idushchiye Vmeste (Moving Together), which burst on the scene in May 2001 by staging a pro-Putin demonstration in Red Square.

The group declared war on what it said was Russia's moral and spiritual decay and organized sometimes satirical, sometimes menacing protests. Its targets included writers and books it considered pornographic, unpatriotic or both.

Nashi has a more explicitly political mission. In a statement, Yakemenko lumped Putin's critics together as "amoral individuals" and a "20th-century plague."

His group, he said, would "put an end to the unnatural union of oligarchs and anti-Semites, Nazis and liberals."

According to Russian newspaper reports, Nashi's supporters include Putin's chief political strategist, Vladislav Surkov.

Surkov is one of the chief architects of recent major Kremlin political changes, including the cancellation of the direct election of governors. The changes have raised concerns that Russia is retreating from democracy.

However, Yakemenko said Nashi had not received financial support from the Kremlin and its creation was "not in any way connected" to Surkov.

While he declined to say how many members Nashi has recruited, Moving Together claims about 80,000 young activists, ages 12 to 30.

Student groups opposing the Kremlin, meanwhile, are relatively small. The Yabloko youth group, led by Yashin, claims about 2,000 members. A similar organization, Moving Without Putin, started in St. Petersburg a few weeks ago and claims to have about 200 active members.

Yashin said he learned of Nashi's meeting and showed up at the Senezh Hotel, a lakeside inn near Solnechnogorsk, about 50 miles northwest of Moscow.

He and a reporter for Kommersant, a newspaper owned by Putin critic Boris Berezovsky, say they infiltrated the morning sessions of the conference.

At one session, Yashin said, Nashi recruits discussed how to respond if members of a radical leftist group threatened to take over a government building. Participants decided, he said, that they could surround the building and prevent the leftists from entering.

About noon, Yashin said, members of Moving Together's leadership showed up at the hotel and recognized him. Yashin and the reporter were paraded before about 200 recruits and denounced.

"Look guys, this is your enemy," Yashin recalls the conference leader, known to him as only Aleksei, telling the audience. "These are the people you will fight."

Later, Yashin said, he met with Yakemenko, who denounced him as "a traitor to the motherland" and ordered him tossed in a snowbank.

Yashin says he has filed criminal charges. He did not appear to be seriously injured.

Yakemenko acknowledged that Yashin was dumped in the snow but said no one kicked him. The intruders were forcibly ejected, he said, only after they refused to leave peacefully.

"These are provocational methods of the people who call themselves liberals and democrats," Yakemenko said.