2024-03-17 07:45:33
by Marco Imarisio
Reznik, the creator of PPP, the «South against Putin»: Let’s test our existence
“Even if no one comes, we will still get the result of understanding what the temperature is in the hospital, and we will stop living in the illusion.” At least Maxim Reznik has clear ideas. The man who invented Polden protiv Putina (South against Putin), or PPP for short, a peaceful action designed to “demonstrate the unity of time and place of the protest”, is one of the many unknown soldiers of Russian dissidence. He responds from an unknown foreign location, and speaks of his initiative as a demonstrative gesture, conceived above all to prevent the participants from risking arrest. «Then, Aleksei Navalny adopted it, and everything took on an even stronger meaning, ending up uniting every form of opposition to Vladimir Putin».
An eternal Borodino
But the former city councilor of St. Petersburg, a pacifist forced to emigrate after the start of the Special Military Operation, is being prosecuted for the possession of 18 grams of hashish, found in a pack of American gum by the police. during a search at his home, he knows well that nothing will change after eleven noon today, one for each time zone that crosses the country. And as Petersburgers often do, to talk about the present he takes refuge in the past. «We must learn to live with an honest understanding of reality: we cannot influence in any way the course of events decided by the Kremlin, but PPP is our only way to prove to ourselves that we exist. We are fighting an eternal battle of Borodino. We know that Napoleon will win in the end, but we have a duty to keep the flame of hope alive. With the queues for Boris Nadezdhin’s candidacy, with flowers on Aleksei’s grave, finding ourselves at the polls today at the same time.”
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The wait for an event that perhaps even got out of hand for those who had planned it is not just Western. What changed the perception was the fact that the seal placed on this stunt was Navalny’s last political gesture. His will, as Novaya Gazeta called it. Also a member of the liberal Yabloko party, Reznik launched the PPP last October, taking inspiration for his name from a famous television drama from the 1970s which described life in the Russian countryside: “The shadows disappear at midday”. Few had noticed. At the beginning of last January, from the Siberian penal colony where he was detained, Navalny had urged the Russians to participate. At the beginning, his own Anti-Corruption Foundation seemed very lukewarm. After the death of the Kremlin’s number one enemy, and the new appeal launched by his wife Yulia, the initiative had the support of practically all the opposition, from Mikhail Khodorkovsky to Dmitrij Gudkov, from Vladimir Kara-Murza to Ilya Yashin.
Intimidation
«Hello, this is the Moscow police, addressing you. You know well that we cannot tolerate your “liberalist” actions against the elections of the President of Russia taking place in the city with impunity. We all know your accomplices. We advise you and your peers to study part 2 of article 141 of the Criminal Code: acts carried out by a group of people in preliminary cahoots or by an organized group are punished with imprisonment from 3 to 5 years. Your fate is in our hands!
There is no certainty that this message is actually the work of the authorities. On the contrary. But what seems certain is its simultaneous appearance, yesterday evening shortly after 7pm, on the mobile phones of thousands of Moscow voters from the liberal area, sent from an unknown number. In St. Petersburg, the police department has warned all electoral commissions of possible complications of the “operational situation” expected for 12 today, and that voters must also be allowed in and out through security doors. In Yekaterinburg, which has always been considered the rebellious city, “if a group of more than three people forms”, the soldiers and volunteers at the polling station will have to record a video with their mobile phone to then send it to the competent offices. Nothing must disturb the ongoing plebiscite, the outcome of which will be announced this evening at 7pm Italian time. Not even a “drop in the ocean”, is how Reznik defined his “his” PPP with appreciable realism. Let’s be clear, said the king of television propagandists Vladimir Solovyov on Friday evening, who must always be consulted to understand the true temperature of those who manage the hospital. “These are not elections, but a simple oath of allegiance to the commander in chief.” Every now and then, the truth.
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March 16, 2024 (modified March 17, 2024 | 09:56)
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