Excellent combat and political at the ready
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The Communist Party of the Russian Federation, the Liberal Democratic Party and A Just Russia – For Truth, as Kommersant found out, are ready, following United Russia, to include participants in a special military operation (SVO) among their candidates in the next regional and municipal elections. However, it is too early to say that such intentions will lead to any significant changes in the political sphere, experts say, especially since the SVO continues and the majority of its participants simply physically will not be able to participate in the electoral process.
Speaking on February 29 with a message to the Federal Assembly, Vladimir Putin called for the integration of SVO participants into the business and political elite, saying that it is precisely such people who should take “leading positions” in various fields. For these purposes, the president also announced a special personnel program “Time of Heroes.” At the end of registration (April 8), more than 44 thousand people submitted applications to participate in the project.
United Russia (UR) took the president’s message as a clear signal and has already announced the preferences that SBO participants will receive in the preliminary vote, based on the results of which the party in power will form lists of its candidates for this fall’s regional and municipal elections. The most significant of these preferences, as Kommersant previously reported, is an automatic increase in votes received by SBO participants based on the results of primaries by 25%.
However, as Kommersant’s sources in the United Russia stipulate, it is not a fact that the presence of such people in the primaries and then in the lists of candidates will be quite large-scale, since the SVO is still ongoing and it is not so easy to involve its participants in election procedures. Most likely, we will talk about those who, for one reason or another, have already been demobilized or whose contract ends in the near future. As one of Kommersant’s interlocutors explained, if United Russia tried to en masse nominate active military personnel directly involved in hostilities for elections, questions might arise from the Ministry of Defense to the party.
We would like to remind you that United Russia began involving SVO participants in the elections last year and even organized special training for them. According to the results of the 2023 campaign, as Kommersant has already reported, 97 “candidates from the Northern Military District” were elected to regional and municipal bodies from United Russia. Most of them were in the Lugansk (27 people) and Donetsk (16) people’s republics, as well as in the Altai Territory (10). Four members of the SVO received deputy mandates in the Ulyanovsk region (two in the regional parliament and two in municipal councils); in other regions their number varied from one to three.
Representatives of other parliamentary parties, in conversations with Kommersant, also talk about their intention to attract SBO participants into the ranks of their candidates, but also make a reservation that we are not talking about a large number of them yet.
Thus, First Deputy Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Yuri Afonin emphasizes that the party does not set a goal to somehow “promote” the facts of attracting SVO participants to the elections, this process is going on in a “calm mode.” Many representatives of the party activists participate in the Northern Military District both as military personnel and as employees of humanitarian missions, and those who return to civilian life gradually join political activities, the communist explains: “We have a line of such candidates, but it’s better to talk about it specifically later “For now, we are only in the process of forming our lists for the upcoming elections.” According to Mr. Afonin, following the results of previous elections, ten nominees of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, who participated in the SVO in one way or another, became deputies at the regional and municipal level, and this year we will most likely talk about dozens of people.
The press service of the SRZP told Kommersant that they are ready to nominate in the upcoming elections all members of the SVO who share the views and ideological positions of the party. In 2023, the SRZP nominated about 50 Northern Military District veterans for elections at various levels, the party added. The Socialist-Revolutionaries also recalled that back in 2022 they submitted to the Duma a bill on the preferential right of SVO participants to find employment in the civil service, and a year later they proposed to the government to establish a corresponding personnel program.
The deputy chairman of the LDPR faction in the State Duma, Stanislav Naumov, told Kommersant that several regional deputies from among the Liberal Democrats are participating in the SVO as volunteers. “If the period of their re-election comes, we will definitely put them at the head of our party lists and nominate them in single-mandate constituencies,” the party member promised. Moreover, members of the SVO in the LDPR are given priority, Mr. Naumov assured: “We expect that they will become deputies both in single-mandate constituencies and on lists and participants in the presidential program “Time of Heroes”.” The LDPR is also ready to provide a “political springboard” to those members of the SVO who are not yet members of the party or have recently joined it, members of their families and volunteers involved in thematic projects.
Almost all parties have a policy of including Northern Military District veterans in their lists, confirms political strategist Evgeniy Minchenko. According to him, there are already precedents when people fight and at the same time participate in primaries, and then in elections. But for now it is hardly possible to talk about the formation of a separate stratum from them, the expert notes. “Actually, this is also why the president’s project came up with a separate personnel program specifically for Northern Military District veterans. And we see that there are such targeted cases when people are sent to the Northern Military District zone with an eye to subsequent personnel promotions,” notes Mr. Minchenko. “That is, in general, such a “personnel selection” is underway, but I think this will begin to become a more or less significant factor in domestic politics in a year or two,” the expert predicts.
Political scientist Alexander Kynev believes that now there is more PR in this issue than real politics: “The experience of last year’s election campaign shows that so far either relatives of those mobilized, or representatives of the local elite who have come to the rescue and went to the Northern Military District zone on a business trip – to work or even with humanitarian aid.” Now there is a request from the authorities and a desire to “account and report,” but there is no need to talk about the formation of a separate cluster from the participants of the SVO, the expert argues. By the way, the same veterans of Afghanistan became noticeable in the political life of the country only a few years after the end of hostilities, and mainly former officers became the main figures, recalls Mr. Kynev.
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