January 12, 2012 — MOSCOW (AP) — Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched the website for his presidential campaign Thursday, only to see it flooded with comments from detractors demanding he not run.
The negative responses, which were followed by a freezing of the site that saw many of those critical comments vanish, illustrated the growing sense of discontent with Putin, whose centralized, top-down rule already has faced historic street protests in recent weeks.
In laying out his priorities for the future on his site, Putin appeared to be trying to reclaim the initiative from the opposition. He promised a more accountable government, especially in areas such as contracts, road construction, municipal services and law enforcement.
But shortly after the launch of the website at 8 GMT, several visitors said it was time for Putin to get out of politics altogether. “I strongly urge you to remove your candidacy from the presidential election,” wrote a user who identified himself as Arkady Vishnev. “This step will be the most useful thing you can do for the country.”
The respected Gazeta.ru online daily said that other users quickly voted the comments the most popular on the website, and several bloggers posted screenshots of the website with the comments and their ratings.
But within hours, the comments were removed from the website, Gazeta.ru said. The removal prompted an instant squall of comments online, and bloggers called on their readers to flood the website with more captious criticism and monitor their removal and ratings.
Putin’s spokesman rejected the claims saying the comments disappeared because the website “froze” due to a huge number of visitors. “The system froze, that’s why (the comments) disappeared,” Dmitry Peskov told the RIA Novosti news agency.
The comments reappeared on the website by 1400 GMT, but with much lower ratings, according to Gazeta.ru. Opposition figures, independent media and bloggers claim that in recent years the Kremlin has organized strings of cyberattacks on websites critical of the Kremlin, Putin and his protege, outgoing President Dmitry Medvedev.
Some 80 percent of Russians still rely on television as their main news source, and the Kremlin has effectively put national TV networks under its control. But Internet use is growing dramatically and the free exchange of critical information has begun to erode the Kremlin’s ability to influence public opinion.
As opposition leaders have been marginalized and their protests routinely broken up by police, blogs and social networking websites have for years been seen as virtually the only venue for Kremlin critics.
The online dissatisfaction went offline after the Dec. 4 parliamentary election, which observers said was blatantly rigged in favor of Putin’s party. Tens of thousands took to the streets on Moscow and other Russian cities in the biggest protests in Putin’s 12-year tenure as president and prime minister.
Putin, who was president from 2000-2008, is still expected to return to that position after the March 4 election. In a poll by the independent Levada Center released Thursday, 42 percent of those questioned said they intend to vote for Putin, while only 9 percent favored any of his handful of competitors. Putin, however, would need to get more than 50 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election.
The poll of 1,600 people was conducted across Russia on Dec. 16-20, and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. __ Online: www.putin2012.ru