Why Are Western News Outlets Ignoring Massive Anti-Putin Protests In Russia?

Russia: Sort of, but Not Really
Denis Sinyakov/Reuters

Protesters in Moscow have gotten more brazen. This banner, which says “Putin, Go Away,” faces the Kremlin.

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

AS a journalist, the best part of covering the recent wave of protests and uprisings against autocrats is seeing stuff you never imagined you’d see — like, in Moscow last week, when some opponents of Vladimir Putin’s decision to become president again, for possibly 12 more years, hung a huge yellow banner on a rooftop facing the Kremlin with Putin’s face covered by a big X, next to the words “Putin Go Away” in Russian.

The sheer brazenness of such protests and the anger at Prime Minister Putin among the urban middle classes here for treating them like idiots by just announcing that he and President Dmitri Mevedev were going to switch jobs were unthinkable a year ago. The fact that the youths who put up the banner were apparently not jailed also bespeaks how much Putin understands that he is on very thin ice and can’t afford to create any “martyrs” that would enrage the antigovernment protesters, who gathered again in Moscow on Saturday.