I'm sitting in Domodedovo Airport, waiting for my flight to Kaliningrad and enjoying the news coming out of Novokuznetsk.
It turns out that so few people came to my meeting yesterday that I got mocked online, while the Novokuznetsk mayor's office, at the very same time, supposedly drew as many as 15,000 people to its celebration.
The man with the orange microphone is the mayor of Novokuznetsk. Elected, by the way, with nearly 90% of the vote.
Obviously, an authority this popular would have no trouble gathering 15,000 people. And it did — you can look at the photos from the official public page. The main event, supposedly the biggest one, looks like this:
Quite possibly there are even 16,000 people here. Sixteen and a half, maybe.
The most important thing we need to remember about Russian politics, my friends, is that Putin's supposedly rock-solid 86% has exactly the same nature as these 15,000 participants in the Novokuznetsk mayor's office rally. Until we understand that ourselves and stop getting discouraged by meaningless opinion polls, the crooks will stay in the Kremlin.
Today in Kaliningrad, we're meeting at 3:00 p.m. at 83 Moskovsky Prospekt. Come along.