[LINK] "How Russia’s opposition learned to stop worrying and love Crimea"

[rfmcdonald]

Writing for Open Democracy, Daniel Kennedy describes how the Russian annexation of Crimea is popular even among the opposition.

Even by Russian standards, Ksenia Sobchak is a rather contradictory public figure. Having launched her television career as an announcer on Russia’s remake of ‘Big Brother’ (‘Dom-2’), Sobchak became a political talk show host on TV Rain, one of Russia’s few independent news channels.

The daughter of the late Anatoly Sobchak, the former mayor of St Petersburg and a close friend of Vladimir Putin, Ksenia Sobchak was also a prominent opposition figure in Moscow’s 2011-2012 protest movement, despite persistent rumours that the Russian president is secretly her godfather.

Herself a scion of privilege, in 2011 Sobchak appeared in a viral video chastising Vasily Yakimenko, leader of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi, for lunching at a fashionable and expensive Moscow restaurant. Recently, following the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, Sobchak was reported to have permanently left Russia after she was named on a ‘hit-list’ of anti-government activists. Sobchak, who regularly travels abroad, denies she has gone into exile.

This week, Sobchak commented positively on Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014. In an interview with the Polish edition of Newsweek, Sobchak stated that ‘for me, just like most teenagers in Soviet times, Crimea brings up positive emotions: holidays, first love and so on. If I had been president then, quite possibly I myself would have dared to reunite Crimea [with Russia].’ Sobchak went on to declare that there is ‘no sense’ in discussing the return of Crimea to Ukraine and that ‘the only thing we can do right now is carry out a new, honest referendum for its inhabitants.’

In making these comments, Sobchak joined the ranks of a number of oppositionists who have publically declared their support (or at least reluctant acceptance) of Crimea’s annexation. In an interview with Ekho Moskvy in October 2014, Alexei Navalny, possibly the most vocal and public of Russia’s ‘non-systemic’ opposition, said that ‘despite the fact that Crimea was seized in violation of all international norms,’ it was now ‘de facto part of the Russian Federation’ and would not become part of Ukraine again.