Vladimir Milov, Leader of the Democratic Choice movement, Russia HARDtalk

Welcome to HARDtalk. I am Stephen Sackur.

There are few more thankless tasks in world politics than being

Vladimir Putin's approval ratings continue to defy gravity,

even in the teeth of a prolonged economic recession.

Kremlin opponents are starved of media airtime, routinely harassed

Maybe democracy isn't a Russian priority?

My guest today is. He is the founder and leader of the Democratic Choice

movement. Vladimir Milov, welcome to HARDtalk. It is a pleasure. I just

described your job as a thankless task. Do you approach it with a

heavy heart? It creates a groom mode sometimes. My co-author was killed

last year. --. It is difficult but someone has to do this. I met or is

many times. --. He said his phone was bugged and he believed he was

followed. He felt insecure. Does your job feel insecure? Absolutely.

Many people point out we are under 24/7 surveillance. You have to get

used to that. There have been many audiotapes, videotapes, published

recently against opposition leaders. You have to get used to it.

I can understand why you might be prepared to accept the sacrifices

that come with living in an aquarium, the constant surveillance

and tension, if you felt you were gaining traction. If you believed

you could make it different. But frankly, if you look at Russia

today, you and. That is because you need to go beyond the headline. --.

Michael Lycian works beyond the ground a lot. -- Michael Lycian. You

try, but if it look at the last regional elections last year you

fought one particular region, north-east of Moscow, as a

democratic alliance, and you did not even cross the 5% threshold to get

any seats. It depends how you look at it. This is a region which is

twice the size of the Netherlands in terms of territory. We were only

given 20 days for campaigning after all the litigation is. --

litigations. They tried to ban us originally. We to 4% in the capital

city. Give us more time and there are plenty of other examples. This

is one of the reasons the government is so anxious to point out this and

harass us and watch us. You are telling me a 4% result in one

particular region could be regarded as a glass half full. I am looking

at different figures, Vladimir Putin's approval rating. At one

point last year it was 89%. You can't argue with that. Even the

people who posted those figures argue with only 10-15% of this 80%.

Hardline supporters say they love him, he is a great leader. The great

majority says he is answer tution phenomenon, not as a person they

want forever. -- institution the governors of the regions have a

lower rating. Bladder Nir Bitton is not the only one governing Russia.

It is his government and he is Kremlin. If he is as popular as the

figures suggest across Russia you have still got a profound problem.

We do. The reality is different from media headlines that he dominates

all. He suffered crushing defeats in regional elections. In a way that is

the point. He has, at times, looked more bowler bull. I am thinking of

late 2011 when there really were a test. -- vulnerable. -- protests.

Everyone said that to me but he got it under control. They say he is

dominating with no chance of breaking through. I am going on

record to say that in a month you will see a lot of trouble. That was

five years ago. Five years on you have gone backward. I don't think

so. For the first time ever a Russian opposition figure has shown

a third of votes in a mayoral election. It was the highest ever in

all our history. This is 600,000 votes in Moscow, and enough of a

foundation to show you are getting affection in Parliament. Not to

mention other results. It isn't as black and white as you are saying. I

want to talk about the economy at some length. But before that I want

to talk about nationalism. It seems to me that what he has done at a

time of great economic difficulty in Russia is successfully cloaked

themselves in the garb of nationalism, nationalistic fervour.

And Russian people, whether it be in Ukraine, Russia, Chechnya, they buy

into him as the defender of national interests. It depends on your

perspective. If you watch Russian state media covering Ukraine for ten

years extensively, they aren't betraying Russia as an aggressive

imperialistic nation that is spreading out nationalistic

aspirations. We are shown as saviours and Ukraine is under attack

by the others. This is what Russian media is saying. I will say that

there is a point, people are infected with nationalistic fervour.

But I would say it is singledigit. Russia is not aggressive. -- it is

only a few people. I wonder if you are misreading it. Let's talk Grammy

us. I suggesting to me that the annexation of Crimea was not a

popular move? -- Crimea. It was painted as a priceless move. We can

get away with it without consequence. You will see greater

numbers of people saying that if we are to pay a big price we should

read in the whole issue. That is the reality on the ground. At the danger

for your as an opposition leader is that if you come out and say that

the annexation of Crimea was wrong and unwise and not in long-term

interest you are portrayed as a traitor. -- But. So do you oppose

and reject the annexation? I do in the way it was done. Let's not mince

words. Yes or no? Absolutely. If you were in power you would hand it

back? I reject how it was done. To hand it back takes more than the

desire of one man. There is no political opposition in Russia. We

have no person that can just hand it back. It takes a process and

understanding. Yeah, I understand, and I will take steps to bring the

international community in and create a dialogue about the future

of Crimea rejected by Putin at the moment. But it is more difficult

than that. It sounds like you want to have your cake and it hit. You

want to oppose Putin's policy but you want them to go back to Ukraine.

-- eat it. It is what I have wanted to do all my life and I have

suffered a lot. I wanted economic and political reforms in Russia.

Eye-watering never ever, read my lips, let the Crimea question stand

between me and between me and reform in Russia. -- I will never -- and

reform. But is this an obstacle between you and winning popular

support? It is not a problem. The other issue that is a big question

you have to deal with with regard to your own people is sanctions imposed

by the West and Europe. Do you support the West in its sanctions or

do you oppose them? I understand why the West did it. Russia has violated

a lot. It is wrong. But I never support direct sanctions against my

country but I understand why you do it and Russia should take steps to

restore trust. Will that satisfy the Russian people? Your economy is in

trouble. It has contracted 4% last year and will contract again this

year. The IMF have said that if you look at the sanctions in finance and

energy and defence it is costing Russia about 1.5% of national GDP

per year. The Russian people will not like you saying you understand

why the West is imposing them and you understand why they have to do

it. You are misreading signals from Russia. I am referring to official

polls. Two thirds of Russians are calling for reconciliation with the

West. It doesn't mean they have fallen in love with the United

States and Europe. But people, who at the same time support Putin, want

a normalisation of relations. This is normal. I wonder. You speak

fabulous English. I don't know whether you were educated in the US,

but you sound like you have been raised in the West. I wonder if

people listening to you talking about getting away from anti-Western

bias, when Putin is telling them that Nato has been humiliating

Russia for years by moving eastward and challenging their sphere of

influence, isn't he striking a chord with the Russian people? This is

what he is doing, for many years trying to portray Nato and the US as

aggressive forces stamping on Russian ground... But it is working.

It is. But you are talking to a person who has travelled more than

60 Russian regions in the past three years. Weekly Iommi to many crowds

of ordinary Russian voters and talk to them. -- I talk to. There are

three global powers, China, Russia, and the Western world. Take your

pick. What about Moscow? Putin's messages that Moscow can be a global

power. Look... Russians live in the real world. They watch TV but most

of the time they live in the real world. They see these deteriorating

roads, corrupt police, worn out houses in the countryside, they

understand better than anybody else that TV reality is fine, but they

know what Russian really is. Talk for a minute about ideology. When

you go to these regions and talk to different people do you try to

persuade them that the Western idea of liberal democracy is what Russia

needs? No, it do not. They would disconnect if I talk like that. Do

you use the word democracy at all? In a practical sense.

He will be in power longer than Brezhnev was. If you believe is he

will serve until 2024. Let's go back to democracy, one thing is Russians

never accepted, at least two thirds majority always rejected Putin's

moves to abolish direct elections of governors, direct elections of

sitting Mayers and heads of district, he did that all over the

country but people never liked that all bought that, and we are ready to

restore that and support people. This is how Russians understand

Qosi. This is how I notice things happening in Russia, in a lot of

towns and villages in Russia, we see old monuments to Stalin are being

put back in the town centre. We see new museums are being established,

which hailed Stalin's contribution to Russian and Soviet history.

History books are being rewritten to glorify what happened during the

Stalinist period and the Soviet period. It seems to me that your

messages about having to choose, either America, China or the Islamic

world as a centre of power, they don't reflect how Russians feel

today about their own past and the potential in their future to be

powerful, as they were, as the Soviet Union. I take it all as a

temporary foam floating around, it will be washed away in never to be

because again if you go grassroots and talk to ordinary people, again

maybe big numbers would say we support Putin's foreign policy and

we like Stalin. When you asked them if you think these issues are

important, Stalin, foreign policy is, Syria, Donbass, whatever, you

will get a small minority because people think about other things and

this is where Putin's policy delivered failures. Let's get to it

because I know you wanted to talk about the economy since the start of

the interview, how do you and your small group of opposition activists

and leaders reach out to the millions of ordinary Russians who

are struggling economically right now but do not appear to be

responding or maybe even listening to your message. How do you reach

them? You mean in terms of technical technology? We can talk about your

access to media. In terms of substance. What is the message that

persuades them you can change their lives for the better. If we go down

to one simple formula it is demon the lies of. Remember what happened

in Britain in the 1970s and what happened afterwards with Thatcher's

reforms. You're saying Russia needs a Margaret Thatcher? We are saying

monopolies. When we talk about political sales, economic sales,

media sales, we have a few media outlets dominating the agenda,

people don't like the word monopoly, people see what happened

in the last 15 years, a shiny new building for Gazprom, for the new

railways, and it is the same as what was there previously. Monopolies

force them to pay more and earn less, and we are going with anti-

monopolisation. Russians want to hear more about it. Isn't that the

cowboy economy that Boris Yeltsin introduced to Russia after the

collapse of the Soviet Union which Russians remember with the deepest

dismay, and that's why Putin with this much more centralised and

authoritarian system appears to appeal to so many Russians who

remember what happened in the anarchic days of Yeltsin. We have a

lot of people who remember what happened. Some of Yeltsin's policies

were quite controversial, and I'm not the guide to endorse all of

them. I may look younger but I'm old enough that I could have voted in

the Soviet times. I remember waking up at 3am to stand in lines for food

for the day, because the shelves were totally empty. When Yeltsin

came there was food in the stores and the problem disappeared

absolutely. If you ask Russians today if you want to go back to the

crazy anarchic economic times of Yeltsin they would say absolutely no

way. No, no, no, most of the people who remember the 1990s understand

that first there's not much difference now, it's all mythology,

phone and TV propaganda. Crime is still high, infrastructure direct

deteriorating and lots worse in many places than the nineteen nineties.

Many new trading centres have been built during the past years. When

you start to talk about this to people this mythology about bad 90s

and good Putin times, it banishes because practically people don't see

many differences, mostly talk and propaganda. Talking about mostly

talk, you talked passionately about your vision for Russia, the problem

is getting back to the internal dynamics of the opposition, the

anti- Putin pro- democratic opposition, you're constantly

fighting amongst yourselves, creating alliances and then you

destroy them, you badmouth, you are full of ego and vanity, you're not

coherent as an opposition. Thank you for the kind words. Can we return to

the 90s? One thing that people realise, which is obvious, income

inequality grew enormously under Putin and people understand that and

it is visible everywhere. Back to us fighting. When we have so many

barriers and when you don't have an easily achieved success story, we

don't have a baggage of success stories to begin with because we are

mostly banned from elections. All the more reason to be united. You

and other leaders like Alex Navalny, you have tried to create this

umbrella opposition movement. Last year a big hullabaloo, you said this

is going to be a movement to take on Putin but the taxi are you are

fighting like rats in a sack, and there are people inside your own

small Democratic Choice movement who have accused you, and I am quoting

Igor of being authoritarian, it's difficult to have 1's own opinion in

the party, meal you react badly to criticism. This is your style. Are

you going to discuss Facebook comments on a BBC programme? Why can

you not unite in the opposition? Let's talk serious things, I refuse

to commend the troll's remarks, it is sunny but not serious. Speaking

seriously, we have a situation where the party licence to run without

serious barriers in elections are controlled by one man. He has huge

problems with his image. He needs to step down from number one position

in the party list, or we won't get any support at all. You won't work

with him? He refuses, we're not fighting, we just say we won't

participate with him because of his image problems, sex tape released on

TV and so on. We are not fighting, we just withdrew. That's a cheap

shot, you mentioned a sex tape that he said is a fraud, even if it

isn't, why would you mention it? It comes back to the fact there is no

unity in the opposition. I mention it because voters have seen it and

they ask questions about what we talked about before. Everybody

knows, including us in the first place, we are under 20 47

surveillance. People ask simple questions, why can't you guys just

simply control yourselves in the wake of the crucial elections? We

have to answer something. We are there to discuss reforms during the

campaign, we do not want to discuss the tapes. Let him answer these

questions, I don't want to answer for him. You're making some kind of

political capital out of it but you make an interesting point, given the

pressures, surveillance, intimidation, arrests and the

improvement of Navalny for a short time, Garry Kasparov, who has been

on this programme, has quit, he doesn't deal said in Russia and

doesn't want to live there any more, how close are you to that? Yes, it

is not safe to live in Russia any more. My partner was killed. And

three months after that, another important member of our coalition,

the chief representative in Moscow, was poisoned. It's very clear it was

a criminal poisoning, most likely done by the FSB structures. So it is

not safe. Will you stay all with you go? I have to say because I have to

bring these efforts to certain kind of results and there is a

perspective ahead despite the nasty things you quote from Facebook. It's

not just from Facebook believe me. If we're going to talk the future, a

last question, you jokingly said Putin will be around longer than

Brezhnev, he could be around if he stands again for president until

2024. If he does, what will Russia look like by 2024? Firstly

technically will stay longer when his current term expires than

Brezhnev so that's almost achieved. Second, it's important to bring

Putin to responsibility for the system that he bailed, and that's

possible through parliamentary elections and all other political

instruments we have. Difficult but possible. If his party loses

majority in parliament this September, which is achievable, they

already have less than 50% approval rating, so that's likely in

September. Putin will have to engage in dialogue with other forces. You

believe that's possible? Absolutely. Vladimir Milov, we have

to end there. Thanks for being on HARDtalk. Thank you. It's a pleasure

to have you. They say a week is a long time

in politics, but a lot can happen in This is where a number

of places were on Sunday.