Russian police detaining a demonstrator at an unauthorised protest against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Moscow. Photograph: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Getty ImagesFrom The Guardian:
From Vladivostok to St Petersburg, Russians are taking to the streets in anger over job losses, unpaid wages and controls on imported cars
Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, is facing the most sustained and serious grassroots protests against his leadership for almost a decade, with demonstrations that began in the far east now spreading rapidly across provincial Russia.
Over the past five months car drivers in the towns of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, on Russia's Pacific coast, have staged a series of largely unreported rallies, following a Kremlin decision in December to raise import duties on secondhand Japanese cars. The sale and servicing of Japanese vehicles is a major business, and Putin's diktat has unleashed a wave of protests. Instead of persuading locals to buy box-like Ladas, it has stoked resentment against Moscow, some nine time zones and 3,800 miles (6,100km) away.
Read more ....
My Comment: Prime Minister Putin is from the old "command-style" school of economics. It has never worked in the past .... it will not work now. His attempts to hamper the only part of the economy that is successful is what is creating this bitterness and sense of protest.
If oil prices continue to stay low ..... these "discontent" will only grow.