This weekend, Russia is going to the polls for its local elections. While unprecedented repression has put an end to the country’s anti-war protests, these votes are the most important space left for democratic politics. They are a chance to expose the conflict between Vladimir Putin's dictatorship and Russia’s social movements.
“[Local politics] is not an island of democracy,” one of the activists involved in the Moscow local elections told me. “This is the frontline, where vanguard battles are taking place.”
One political campaign, YouNominate (VyDvyzhenie, which in Russian also means ‘You are the movement’), has brought together independent, protest-minded candidates for municipal deputies in Moscow on a single platform.
