Source: Council on Foreign Relations
Author(s): Elliott Abrams
Original Link: https://www.cfr.org/blog/egypts-putinesque-election
With an election looming, the incumbent president arrests and disqualifies all possible opponents, one after another. Vladimir Putin? Yes, as we see in his treatment of Alexei Navalny. (The BBC tells part of that story here.) And these moves by Putin have been widely denounced and seen for exactly what they are: a destruction of freedom and democracy in Russia.
The Russian human rights and democracy activist, Vladimir Kara-Murza (who was twice poisoned by Putin’s thugs) raised the critical question in a Washington Post article entitled “If Putin is so popular, why is he so afraid of competition?” Kara-Murza wrote this….