There are various explanations and numerous interpretations to try to understand Moscow's obstinacy in supporting the Damascus regime, and its willingness in defending it to go quite far in confronting the international community. Thus, some point to a strategic interest for Russia, which wants to preserve its only naval base in the Mediterranean, while other speak idyllically of a principled stance respecting an old friendship, and others still speak of a relationship of self-interest, based on the trade of weapons, no less. Yet Russia's legislative elections, which were held last week, have come to reveal evidence of a different kind about the secret of the intimate relationship between the two regimes: their similarity in structure and in practice. Indeed, the Russian elections, and the campaign of fraud that dominated the vote-counting process – as per the testimony of international organizations – followed by a campaign to repress those protesting the results and arrest hundreds of those demanding their annulment and the resignation of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, have shown that the semi-security regime in Moscow still bears the heritage of the Bolsheviks and engages in the same practices as they did, even if it covers itself with modernist slogans that seem to no longer convince voters, as the opposition asserts that if it had not been for fraud and for ballot-boxes being stuffed in advance with loyalist electoral lists, the party of the Medvedev-Putin duo would not have been able to preserve its majority in the State Duma. And if Moscow has rejected American and European accusations and comments about the course taken by the elections, viewing them as “rigid templates and outdated characterizations”, it certainly could not ignore what was published in prestigious Russian newspapers about the existence of “an administrative machine in the service of Putin's regime, which organized operations of fraud and exerted pressures on NGOs and independent media outlets”, adding that “if society needs proof that the elections were fabricated, such proof lies in the nervousness of the authorities and in their hysterical reaction to the legitimate and peaceful attempts at monitoring the course of the voting process”. The similarity with the Syrian regime thus stands: electoral fraud, repression of protesters, ignoring the demands of the opposition, and raising unconvincing nationalistic slogans that praise history and play on the latent desire to restore lost glory, with the sole aim of remaining in power at any cost. And although the protest movement in Moscow and the big cities is still only beginning, it is likely to escalate, especially as the Russian regime is gradually losing its credibility by standing against the movement for democratic change inside Russia and throwing opposition members in jail, as well as by its support of collapsing regimes abroad, as took place with Libya and is currently taking place with Syria, and its defense of governments that challenge their people and the world, such as Iran. Perhaps the example that embodies the regime of the “Neo-Bolsheviks” the most is Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with his rigid discourse reminiscent of the era of Khrushchev and his Cuban missiles, especially in his failed meetings with representatives of the Syrian opposition, at whom he leveled accusations and directed what resembles a warning of the necessity of negotiating with the regime. As for the Russian suggestion to send observers to Syria, knowing that both countries assert their rejection of any “international” interference in Syria's affairs and insist on letting the Syrian regime “engage in dialogue” with the opposition “according to its own understanding” of the instruments of such dialogue, which have reached the extent of making use of warplanes, it is only laughable, as Moscow itself is to begin with in need of those who would observe it.
