This Russian born commentator and blogger, who is living in Florida, assesses the significance of the recent elections in Russia's parliament, the Duma. Although the winning party, United Russia, is a party divided between nationalist Russians like Putin and the Medvedev faction (aka the Atlanticists), he argues that the increase in the United Russia party's representation in the Duma really represents increased and solid support for the Putin faction. Here is an excellent description of the Atlanticist faction and what the election results represent for them:
The truth is, the real opposition to Putin is precisely that, the economic-financial ministers of the Medvedev government and all the factions which they represent: bankers, IMF-drones, corrupt businessmen from the 1990s who hate Putin because he does not allow them to steal like in the past, all the ex-Nomenklatura and their kids who made a killing in the 1990s and whose heart is in the West, the Atlantic Integrationists à la Kudrin who are basically “Washington consensus types” and who hate the Russian people for voting for Putin. That is the real opposition and that opposition is far more dangerous than the US and NATO combined. And for that opposition the result of the elections was a crushing defeat.
