Looks like Russia's biggest Anti-Putin candidate for 2018 has cut a deal with the Kremlin.

[DetlefK]

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/10/23/1709261/-News-from-Russia-presidential-elections-a-journalist-stabbed-a-singer-vanished

Currently the most prominent “opposition” candidate is socialite Ksenia Sobchak, who on the one hand, has been a frequent target for shallow, sexist criticism, and on the other hand, seems to invite shallow criticism by being an all-around shallow person. Even worse, there’s more than a whisper that her campaign is Kremlin-approved, with the announcement published in state media with a print date weeks in advance (i.e. the publicity was organized before the candidacy was announced).

Link to tweet

https://www.rferl.org/a/ksenia-and-aleksei/28806565.html

The dominant conventional wisdom is that she cut a deal with the Kremlin and agreed to be the token liberal candidate in exchange for being allowed back on state-controlled television channels.

Sobchak's candidacy will apparently help legitimize Vladimir Putin's inevitable coronation by generating excitement and boosting turnout in what everybody understands is a Potemkin, stage-managed election.

...

But while using Sobchak as a patsy to legitimize and bring excitement to a dull, choreographed election and as a foil to blunt the Navalny factor may be the Kremlin's plan, there are also reasons to believe that this could backfire.

And a couple of data points have already emerged suggesting that while the Kremlin is seeking to play her, Sobchak is also playing her own game.

By framing her candidacy as a vote "against all" -- an option that was actually on the Russian ballot in the 1990s but was removed during Putin's rule -- Sobchak is lowering the threshold for claiming a moral victory.

She knows, of course, that she is not going to win. But Russian elections are not about the results, which are preordained. They're about the ritual, the optics, and the story.




-----------------

So... She's essentially Russia's version of Jill Stein: Playing a revolutionary for money and fame.

[Hortensis]

1. Anti-Putin candidates have a way of ending up in prison or graves,

and a ballot with only his name on it would be...harshly honest.