Кандидат Даванков (English subtitles) @Max_Katz

Odd as that may sound, after two openly anti-war candidates—

Ms. Duntsova and Mr. Nadezhdin—were disqualified from the ballot, we still got one anti-war candidate left.

So we can still air our anti-war views through the voting process.

The guy’s name is Vladislav Davankov, the New People party.

He’s now campaigning on a manifestly anti-war or even anti-Putin platform.

Davankov’s campaign talking points are antithetical to what’s being sold as the new norm, namely,

an aggressive and out-of-whack foreign policy plus repressive legislation.

In short, they oppose this disgusting “beat or get beaten” zero-sum game.

Plenty of people are mulling over his candidacy as that of a Kremlin puppet.

Importantly, though, the Kremlin’s plans and implementation thereof aren’t the same thing.

The internet is awash with talk of a deal each candidate has struck

with the president’s office to follow their script, fill a specific niche, and target a specific audience.

Like, they may not derail the campaign’s overarching narrative, let alone outshine the protagonist.

Except those who are saying it seem to have spent the previous 25 years

in a different country and under a different government.

This spurious regime has always observed its obligations, played by the rules,

respected its counterparties, and held its promises in high regard.

If Putin takes on someone in a game of chess, the opponent will have some security assurances.

In the real world, though, a public deal with Putin can be illustrated by the charred debris

of the Embraer jet that carried the Wagner Group leaders.

In Prigozhin’s case, it wasn’t a behind-the-scenes negotiation that would’ve been anyone’s guess.

Far from it, Putin went public to offer him security assurances.

There are more examples that are far less violent.

In the 2018 election, presidential hopeful Pavel Grudinin ran on the Communist Party ticket,

as mainstream as it gets.

He’d only been nominated because the party’s chairman Gennady Zyuganov already had

a hard time cobbling together a decipherable sentence.

The guy could no longer handle the target audience he was assigned.

Pavel Grudinin didn’t stage a memorable campaign.

Instead, he was a textbook Communist Party candidate who lived up to the billing.

He breached social inequality and the retirees’ plight, berated the crazy officials and MPs,

advocated for the workers, and exposed regional violations of the socialist world order.

He was a spitting image of Gennady Zyuganov and followed the script to the letter.

But in the end, something went wrong.

Maybe it was his charisma and his vibe of a tough agrarian who didn’t mince his words.

Maybe it was the effect of a fresh candidate who replaced the old robotic Commie candidate.

Anyway, the president’s office must’ve seen Grudinin’s numbers soaring, and went,

“Whoa! That’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

He was expected to be a Kremlin stooge, not an active player.

Remarkably, the same clique of talking heads who had been previously attacking Navalny turned

their sights toward Grudinin and unleashed a smear campaign like there was no tomorrow.

It looked as though he hadn’t been pushed onto the ballot by the president’s office

to entertain the crowd and ramp up voter turnout numbers.

It looked as though he’d been a random extremist who’d slithered his way onto the ballot.

They didn’t stop there. Following the election, Grudinin was bashed further and kicked out of the public eye.

Six years on, he’s barely made a single public appearance ever since.

Mind you, he finished runner-up in what looked like a landslide over the third-place Zhirinovsky.

The guy was publicly obliterated. Thank goodness, he stayed out of jail.

Needless to say, no one could make it onto the 2024 ballot without the president’s office’s approval,

without a script, or without a pair of cramping shoes they were to fill.

Seeing as Yekaterina Duntsova was deemed a threat and barred

from gathering the signatures and Boris Nadezhdin was kicked off the ballot,

it looks like the system can no longer afford an experiment.

But their approval and their deals aside, it’s still not going to be a slamdunk.

Chances are, you can only negotiate with the system looking for reciprocity

if your battle tanks are within striking distance of Moscow and as long as they are there.

There appears to be no other way to have your counterparty hold up their end of the bargain.

VLADISLAV DAVANKOV’S ROLE

Davankov was assigned the same role his political party was.

His job is to target urban middle-class citizens who mostly oppose the war and all of the current policies.

Overall, everything he says seems to fit his predetermined role.

However, those who ushered him onto the ballot may easily change their minds in a heartbeat.

They may conclude he’s gone too far and begun doing his own thing.

And if things go south, he won’t be able to cite his heart-to-hearts with the president’s office in court.

That’s you never underestimate a presidential hopeful with an anti-war agenda.

It doesn’t matter if he’s dancing around it. It’s still a high-risk situation.

As long as the system believes there’s total public support of this war against a precious

few anti-war voters, Davankov may feel safe.

But the system won’t indulge in wishful thinking for too long.

There’ll come a point where they’ll figure out that Davankov’s stance strikes

a chord with millions of people, and not just with a handful of Moscow hipsters.

Davankov’s track record in politics is in no way spotless.

He’s a current MP, and the Kremlin spin doctors are keeping a watchful eye

on all of the 450 occupants of the State Duma quarters to make sure none of them has

a side gig on their own terms.

They make sure no one with a pinch of legitimacy and formal power under their belt could one day

distance themselves from the rest of the pack and go, “I was only proposing bills

on children’s healthcare. The rest of it was forced upon me.”

Anyone with a fair track record and a formal job title is a shoo-in for an interim government role

in the event of a coup.

They can go on the record, saying, “Listen up, folks!

Just do what I say because I was an elected representative and used

the power I had to effect change.”

From the system’s perspective, there’s no one more dangerous than people

who somehow think they depend on their voters, work for them,

and do their job because they were voted in, and not on the big bosses’ whim.

These guys typically face the fate of Governor Furgal.

Over the past 25 years, the State Duma has been super-proficient at implicating every single member

in its dirty deeds.

They even use the term “mass grave” to denote a particularly unsavory bill everyone must sign.

Mind you, not just vote for it but support the proposal.

The most conspicuous example was the Dima Yakovlev anti-adoption bill

where the proponents’ list almost equaled the total number of MPs.

Whenever they’re reviewing an arcane industry-specific bill,

like changes to the excise tax rates or to the umpteenth clause of the oil production regulations,

United Russia uses its constitutional majority to pass it.

They don’t need anyone else. It’s just about the procedure.

But when it comes to the annexation of the occupied provinces,

the ban on the gender transition, or a suite of the most wicked repressive bills,

it goes beyond the formal procedure.

The laundry list of abominations must be part of every MP’s resume.

I’m not saying we should empathize with these poor legislative sufferers eroding the fundamentals

of law and human rights and wrecking millions of people’s lives.

It’s the State Duma’s eighth convocation, six of them on Putin’s watch.

The present-day MPs didn’t suddenly find themselves screwed.

They knew what they were doing all along.

They knew their higher-ups and the duties they’d be performing in exchange

for hefty paychecks, privileges, benefits, status, and corruption avenues.

What I’m saying is, there’s no point scrutinizing Davankov’s stint as an MP.

Just get this: there’s no Vladislav Davankov as a standalone figure.

WHAT ARE WE ENDORSING?

It’s not about electing a State Duma time-server as Russia’s president or changing

the leadership following this vote.

We’ve just got a candidate with an anti-war agenda.

It’s just the name on the ballot encapsulating a clear political statement.

All we need to know about Davankov can be found in his campaign materials.

We’re voting for peace, the revocation of the repressive laws, and the renormalization of our country.

The mass voting for these simple slogans is going to put a major strain on the system

that convinced itself all of Putin’s rivals were jailed, ousted, or killed.

Putting a strain on it is exactly what we’re striving for.

There’s a reason Putin keeps trotting out his self-empowering affirmations

whereby the “absolute majority” of Russians support the war and himself personally,

which is, at this point, pretty much the same.

Why would he be yakking on about it if everyone indeed backed him? Who’s the target audience?

Is it the tiny minority?

Clearly, he’s talking to the elites.

It’s these guys who are constantly looking for a time where treason equals foresight.

It’s these guys who should be convinced Putin’s in control, there’s no dithering, and he won’t be dethroned.

The repression campaign against the celebs had the same purpose.

Prior to that, they were just expected to stay on the sidelines.

Now, they must start applauding the regime and rooting for it.

Anyone who could’ve been infected with dissenting ideas, especially those who have the money,

control law enforcement, or wield some power, is supposed to realize they’re the outsiders.

They won’t have allies, and any plot is doomed.

I’m not saying the official results of the election will have anything to do with the real outcome.

The system did its utmost to ensure the virtual vote of the virtual voters,

taking advantage of e-voting and the occupied provinces with lists of millions of fictional voters.

But don’t make a mistake thinking the paper-based ballots cast by the real people

in favor of the anti-war candidate can’t be counted.

It won’t be feasible nationwide.

But the major cities tend to have more election monitors and less electoral fraud,

and that’s where we’ll find out about the way things stand.

Clearly, Putin will rack up his 99.9% of the vote in Chechnya.

Of course, the entire fictional population of Kherson that’s still registered

as a Russian city will vote for Putin. But it’s immaterial.

Past elections show us that the real results become public knowledge, like it or lump it.

In the 2020 Belarusian election, the vote count records were physically destroyed.

But everyone knew for a fact that Lukashenko hadn’t come close to winning 80% of the vote.

They knew Tsikhanouskaya was the winner.

We're still a country mile away from racking up Tsikhanouskaya’s numbers.

What we’re capable of, though, is ramping up the numbers for the Anti-War Candidate who happens

to be Vladislav Davankov so that it’ll be clear that there’s no public consensus.

The system knows we can do it. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t have shoved away the potential hopefuls.

They wouldn’t have feared that a journalist from Russia’s heartland could gather 300,000 signatures.

or that a boring liberal with 30 years of experience in politics would be a serious challenger.

Sergei Mironov has already called for Davankov to be kicked off the ballot:

“Davankov seeks to be a ‘peace-maker.’

He wants the sons, the fathers, and the husbands to reunite with their families.

He’s alone in his fight against the dimwitted hawks, some ‘politicians from the past.’

That’s not what the country needs now.” And he got a quick rebuttal:

“The trouble with Russian politics is the willingness to go with the flow.”

The system knows it’s faking the consensus that doesn’t exist.

They realize the truth may start gushing out at any moment,

and that’s where the regime may at least take a hit.

The worst thing we can do now is start scrutinizing Davankov’s past.

People will be frowning upon our choice and going, “Why the hell are you voting for this SOB?”

They’ll employ the same technique that was used to question the Smart Voting system

where they went, “How come you’re voting for Stalin fans and murderers in a bid to oppose

United Russia and thieves? Are you nuts? Do you want another Great Purge?”

This discourse only seeks to divide the opposition and make us forget

what we were looking for in the first place.

Our job is to show how many people are poised to rail against Putin and the war

and how many want the country to get back to normal. We must show that “normal” is a thing.

It’s important to realize that Davankov only exists as a name on the ballot.

His platform says no to the war, the repressive laws, and the government snitches like Mizulina.

It claims we need to be a normal country again. That’s what we’re saying, too. And that’s what we’re voting for.

I know a lot of people are worried.

Like, we’ll bring him plenty of votes, but then he’ll turn against the liberals and seek war with Europe.

That’s a possibility. The system has an ample toolset to make any individual look like a public disgrace.

Too bad. We’ll be sorry for Davankov, but how is it going to change anything for us politics-wise?

We aren’t voting for Davankov as a human being.

We aren’t putting our trust in him, hoping that from there on out, he’ll be representing us.

We’re voting for his platform. We’re voting for peace and for renormalization.

Is Vladislav Davankov a product of the president’s office? Absolutely.

There’s no two ways about it. But our activity of the past 12 years has always succeeded

in turning the tables on the Kremlin strategists’ fantasies.

The officials were anxious to ban everyone they deemed to be the anti-establishment and anti-war candidates.

So, let’s vote for the establishment guy then and make this government machine trip over its own product.

Is it possible he’ll then be ordered to go to the Donbas with an apology tour? It is.

But we aren’t committing to him. He’s not even our candidate. He’s not looking to win the presidency.

He’s merely a name next to a box on the ballot, standing for some reasonable things.

So, Davankov is a good option for a “f__k you” vote addressed to Putin and the current state of his system.

To some, it may seem gullible, but that’s effectively what we’ve been doing over the years. And we had success.

Let’s try one more time.

I’ll vote for Davankov, and I want you to do the same.

See you tomorrow!