Russia's Election.

On Sunday December 4th (4/12/11) Russia held an election for it's Parliament or Duma. Although it was never in doubt that Vladamir Putin's United Russia party would win people were interested to see by how much in an effort to gauge the level of support for Putin's next Presidential bid. The answer coming from the streets seems to be "not much." Fuelled by accusations of vote rigging and some opposition parties boycotting the poll Moscow has seen some of it's largest street demonstrations since the fall of the USSR with over 3o0 arrests and the army on the streets in force.

The Israelis are actually being quite open about the fact they have a significant role in this mini Russian Uprising in order to put pressure on the Russian government over it's support for Iran. The fact they're being so open about it means that Israel is also trying to gauge the level of international support for their similar actions in Iran, Egypt and Syria.

While it is reassuring that Israel is prepared to examine and debate it's conduct in the wider middle east of the past year using Russia as an example to drive this discussion forward presents it's own set of problems. While Vladamir Putin is no where near as bad as the dodgy middle eastern dictators who've been having a hard time of it recently he presides over a Russia that is far from a perfect democracy. There are significant problems with corruption and civil liberties specifically the suppression of political dissent and the media. However as time has passed there has been a growing movement within Russia which recognises that these things are problems that are holding the whole country back and need to be changed. The worry though is that by showing it's hand in this way there is a risk that this movement will collapse in on itself making it more difficult for those changes to be made. The absolute worst case scenario is that Russia ends up more like Syria where a reform minded President has been prevented from undertaking that reform by constant international interference.