Russia's 'Fake' Election Our World

Sarah Campbell, BBC News.

It just warms the heart.

Now on BBC News, Our World.

In Moscow nightclub, the opposition

candidate makes her pitch to the

country. Russian democracy is a

strange and sometimes dangerous

beast.

It is a fake election.

It is

a fake election?

Yes, I am always

telling that.

How do you mean?

I

mean like any casino. The win is

always on the house. In Russia it is

always on that it didn't side. -- it

is or is on Vladimir Putin's side.

So I'm not trained to win, I just

want to be heard. -- it is always

on.

Once upon a time, in the former

capital of the czars, eight girl was

born with a silver spoon in the MoU.

-- a. When the Soviet empire

collapsed, so it was turned into

gold for some. Ksenia Sobchak's

family was among those view. Her

father, one of the founders of

Russia's new democracy, became the

Mayor of St Petersburg. He would

later die in uncertain

circumstances, while his former

deputy, a once unknown KGB officer,

would become the most powerful man

in Russia.

It was a person who gave

but admitted his first job. --

Vladimir Putin his first job.

But by

a strange twist of fate, nearly two

decades later, the girl with the

silver spoon would challenge the new

star for the highest office in the

land. -- czar.

350 miles south of Moscow, the city

of cause. Ksenia Sobchak is on the

campaign trail. -- Anatoly Sobchak.

Her purpose here is to talk to would

know Russians.

The biggest problem

in Russia is not freedom of speech.

Unfortunately, for many people, it

is the poverty.

Out in the suburbs,

residents have been complaining they

cannot get their children into a

local nursery.

Ksenia Sobchak herself is the mother

of a young child, and she is hoping

that will help connect with these

voters. And now she is haranguing

some local officials. This is pretty

much what but it did and does when

he goes around. -- Vladimir Putin.

Had fillet people react to Europe,

coming as you do, from a privileged

background?

You know, I don't try to

be like, I am late one of you,

because it is not true. -- how do

you feel people. If I wear red

lipstick in my ordinary time, why

should I take an offer them. So I am

not a populist. I come in a good car

and in good clothes, but they are is

money, I did not steal it.

Corruption is a big issue in this

election for all candidates. After a

slightly optimistic welcome at local

campaign headquarters, Ksenia

Sobchak take things one step

further.

In Russian politics, there are

certain red lines. Among them,

People, and his inner circle. --

Putin and his inner circle. Direct

criticism of Vladimir Putin seems

dangerous, and many people do not

want to know. But Anatoly Ksenia

Sobchak's Jenny Shin dissidents has

been an unusual one.

-- Ksenia Sobchak's rise to

dissidents. In the first decade of

this century, as many Russians

struggled, Ksenia Sobchak

transformed herself from society

rich kid to television celebrity.

Leading the masses a diet of reality

television and branding herself

simply Ksenia

television and branding herself

simply Ksenia. But then the girl

with the silver spoon had a valid

transformation. In 2011, she joined

opposition protests and was properly

carted off to a police cell. Alexei

Navalny, the movement's leader, has

long been a thorn in the

government's side.

I was close with

him for many years. We shared many

values and we still share many of

those values, I hope.

But when a

Alexei Navalny was banned from

standing in this year's collections,

Ksenia Sobchak announced that she

was running instead. Proponents said

that she was a Kremlin agent, just

more reality television. -- her

opponents. Could that be true? Could

it be that Ksenia Sobchak is doing

the Kremlin's bidding? I paid a

visit to her campaign headquarters

to meet one of her top advisers, a

woman well versed in the darker arts

of Russian politics. She should be.

She used to work for Vladimir Putin

himself.

Just to be clear, this is Ksenia

Sobchak's own campaign advisers

saying yes, we are plainly Kremlin's

game. But in Russia, there is always

more than one game going on.

And that is exactly what Ksenia

Sobchak says she is trying to do. If

there is one thing that Ksenia

Sobchak understands, it is the power

of television. She is using her

candidacy to talk about the blue

issues. -- issues that are taboo. To

see this on state television is

heresy. Genuinely subversive.

Shocked presenters have resorted to

surreal measures to try and run her

out. But here is the conundrum: The

Kremlin controls everything. Who

gets to stand in elections, and who

gets to go on television. So what is

going on? Ksenia Sobchak treads a

delicate path. Before she set out on

her journey, the girl with the

silver spoon needed to get the

approval of the czar in the Kremlin.

She needed wise counsel.

Alexei Navalny's is one of Russia's

most famous and well respected

journalist. -- Alexei is. As it

happens, Ksenia Sobchak is in the

process of making a film about her

father, the former mayor. But it

didn't agree to an interview. In

September, she went to see him in

the Kremlin. -- Ksenia Sobchak

agreed to an interview. I said I was

there to challenge.

And he was

silent for a second, then said,

well, that is your decision. But it

is your responsibility.

What you

think you by that?

I don't even want

to think about that. I don't think

anything nice.

And so the czar

decided to accept this challenge.

But not everybody was happy. Behind

the facade of monolithic power,

different factions struggled for

power.

How indeed? Had had the girl who

spoke out against the czar get

permission to run against an? The

answer to this riddle lies buried in

the past, when Vladimir Putin worked

for me to one's father in St

Petersburg. -- Ksenia Sobchak's

father.

Perhaps it should more accurately be

titled the Museum of how Russian

Democracy was poisoned at Source.

The name Anatoly Sobchak stands

alongside the likes of Gorbachev and

Yeltsin.

The story of how the anti-Soviet

reformer chosen and skewer KGB

officer as his deputy is also the

story of how factions from the old

Soviet security establishment have

come to be running Russia today. --

obscure KGB officer.

Anatoly Sobchak was voted out of

office in 1996 amid allegations of

corruption. While his political

fortunes declined, he is deputies

were on the rise. Putin moved to

Moscow and got a job in the Kremlin.

When anticorruption investigators

called Sobchak in for questioning,

Putin personally helped spirit him

out of the country.

With Sobchak Don, the investigation

ground to a halt. -- gone. A few

years later an independent

journalist in Saint Petersburg had

an unexpected visitor. A man by the

name of Yuri claims to have the

details of the Sobchak

investigation.

He had aid dossier, I didn't take it

into my room is, I didn't open it.

-- a dossier.

Why would a journalist

not want to read the dossier? The

answer is self reservation. Not long

after this, Yuri was charged with

murder. When a judge dismissed the

case due to lack of evidence, armed

officers burst into the courtroom

and rearrested him. He ended his

days in a remote prison colony.

He

knew too much. He used to work for

Sobchak. And because... He was

dangerous, when he was three.

But

Sobchak was already out of the

picture. Why was he still dangerous?

He was dangerous to someone around

Sobchak, someone who was very close

to Sobchak. I suspect that he was

dangerous to fit in as well.

--

dangerous to Putin. In the course of

making a film about her father,

Ksenia Sobchak got hold of

classified investigation files. She

says the case was cooked up I

hardliners to discredit her father.

But she does confirm for the first

time that Vladimir Putin was

questioned as part of the

investigation.

All those interviews

and investigations with him, with

Putin, they look very professional.

It is a fact that they found

nothing, they were very

disappointed. They didn't succeed.

In Moscow, factions were

manoeuvring. Putin was being groomed

as the successor to Boris Yeltsin.

The battle was over who would have

sway over the new leader. In

February 2000, Anatoly Sobchak died

suddenly at the age of 62. At the

funeral, Russia's new president was

distraught.

That was the first and

last time everybody saw him crying

in Russia. I still remember it. One

of the shocks I had was his

reaction. He was totally killed

this.

But what killed Savchuk? To this

day, that remains a mystery. The

original autopsy was inconclusive,

and many were suspicious, including

Sobchak's widow, Ksenia's mother.

She had her own autopsy performed

but instead of making the results

public, she keeps them locked in a

safe in a secret location.

Today, the Kremlin is still a place

of rival factions. To threaten their

power is to take a terrible risk.

The girl with the silver spoon is

not a girl any more. Her family

history may protect her, but only up

to a point.

Meanwhile, are, Sobchak campaign

trail.

From public transport to pensions to

childcare, Ksenia listens to

people's everyday problems as if she

were a real candidate in a real

election.

And the passengers on this trolley

bus know all about her family ties.

And yet...

What, then, is the purpose of all

this elaborately it? If Ksenia is a

threat to the regime, why let her

run at all? I have spoken to a

senior government official on the

condition I could not quote them by

name. I said, what is the point of

having an election when everybody

acknowledges only one person can

win? They said, look, this is a

western invention that you have. We

do have a classical democracy in

Russia. We have what is called a

developing democracy. The truth is,

Russian democracy has stopped

developing. It is frozen. Paralysed

by two certain facts: just as surely

as Putin will win the next election,

he will also not be around forever.

Behind the walls of the Kremlin,

powerful people are playing games.

Ksenia Sobchak is a pawn. Some

factions are pushing forward. Others

want to hold her back. The girl with

the silver spoon knows all this. But

she thinks the pawn just might

become Queen.

That is my chess game.

I'd play this option of going to

elections, because I was thinking

that I had the chance of going

through, because of my name, because

they underestimate me, because I

have a past which they can always

put on me, because they are not

afraid of me as much as a Alexei

Navalny.

Who is the better

chessplayer, you were President

Putin?

I don't know. We will see in

the end. But the end is not me. I am

only starting. -- the end is not

near.