MOSCOW, September 21 (Itar-Tass) — Founder of the Congress of Russian Communities (KRO) Dmitry Rogozin, who is currently Russian permanent representative to NATO, urged KRO members to support Vladimir Putin at the upcoming elections.
Speaking at the KRO congress on Wednesday, Rogozin said the Motherland-Congress of Russian Communities public organisation had no political instruments for taking part in the elections and should have to use possibilities to form a coalition with other political forces.
“I made the choice. My choice is [leader of United Russia] Vladimir Putin,” Rogozin said, adding that not only political contacts but also human relationship “unite us. I believe that he [Putin] should be supported amidst the current political situation”.
He stressed that the KRO key task “is to team up with power not so much with parliament as into executive power where there are many people who think as we do”.
At the same time, he said any coalition should be based on serious agreements, which take into account the KRO programme. “Our main task is to start uniting the whole Russian world and organise legal discussions on inter-ethnic relations,” Rogozin said.
Rogozin also called for creating a World Russian Duma, which would include descendants of Russian immigrants. As for compatriots in the Baltic States, Rogozin believes that they can be granted the passive right to vote.
Finally, Rogozin called for “doing everything possible to convince the European Union and the European Parliament to adopt the Russian language”. “And moreover, the Russian language should be in Ukraine,” he added.
He urged his supporters “not to be excessively delicate” because “only force and self-righteousness is respected in the world”. “It’s enough to grumble and jar on someone’s nerves. Now it’s necessary to team up Russian compatriots with power,” he said.
The Congress of Russian Compatriots is a nationalist political organization in Russia. It was created in the early 1990s initially to promote the rights of ethnic Russians living in the newly independent countries of the former Soviet Union.
The group contested a number of elections to the Duma in the 1990’s. In the 1995 Duma elections, the group took 4.3% of the vote, just missing the 5% threshold to gain seats. In 1999 it again failed to pass the 5% threshold, although KRO candidates did win a small number of single-mandate district seats.
In 2006 the KRO was revived by Rogozin following the merger of his Motherland party party into a new Fair Russia coalition. Rogozin initially stated that he would turn the KRO into a political party to contest the Duma elections in December 2007.
The Congress of Russian Communities (KRO), a right-wing political and human rights movement, will cooperate with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin-backed All-Russia People’s Front (ONF), a senior KRO member said in May.
“I am set for close cooperation [with the ONF],” Alexander Bosykh said during a meeting in Moscow with representatives of youth organizations involved in the ONF.
Putin called for creating the All-Russia People's Front, whose name echoes popular communist movements, at the United Russia party conference on May 6. The new movement is intended to broaden the party's electoral base with “non-party people”, including trade unions, NGOs, business associations and youth groups.
Bosykh praised the creation of the ONF, saying that it would become a ground “where one can work regardless of his political preferences, sympathies and antipathies” and solve concrete problems. He said, however, that it was too early to speak about the KRO joining the Putin-backed movement.
Some analysts see the creation of the ONF as Putin's bid to boost his United Russia party's flagging popularity and head off a potentially damaging poor showing in parliamentary elections due in December.
The Congress of Russian Commons was created in the early 1990s as a nationalist political party to promote the rights of ethnic Russians in the newly independent former Soviet republics. The organization was dissolved a decade later and revived in 2006 by its founder Dmitry Rogozin, currently Russia's envoy to NATO, as a movement aimed at protecting human rights.
The Russian Justice Ministry registered the KRO in early May, finally satisfying the organization's registration request, which had been denied several times.
As one of the KRO leaders, Bosykh said he intended to promote stricter immigration regulations in Russia, better control of the money allocated by the government for youth programs, as well as direct dialogue between conflicting ethnic groups.