Thread by @leonidragozin

Have you circulated the story about “communists laying wreaths to the monument of NKVD executioners”? Congratulations, you have likely assisted Putin’s administration in neutralizing Navalny’s Smart Voting. Here is how it works: >>>

The story appeared on polit.ru, a website formerly associated with Kremlin spin doctor Modest Kolerov. It attributes the initiative to a generic “communist party”, not to KPRF - Russia’s second largest party.
m.polit.ru/news/2021/09/0…

You will not find any mention of this initiative on KPRF’s own website. Why? Because it is KPRF, which this product of black political technology is striving to discredit in the eyes of liberal pro-Navalny voters.

Navalny’s Smart Voting is a strategy of voting for anyone who has the greatest chance of derailing Putin’s United Russia in a situation when genuine opposition is barred from taking part in elections. It is a way for non-systemic opposition to show it is a force to reckon with.

This is why Team Navalny is inclined to support KPRF in the party list part of the upcoming Duma election. A recent hike in the number of people favouring KPRF, combined with further decline of United Russia, in the latest FOM poll can be safely attributed to that.

A number of prominent liberal Russian commentators, have fallen for this Kremlin trick and so did the Russia-bashing blob in the West. Just an example of how easy it is to fool people in the game of emotional politics and history wars. Confirmation bias at work!

Notable among those who have jumped on this fake is the anonymous satirists network - a presumably Ukrainian and pro-Poroshenko infowar op that works against president Zelensky in Ukraine and sides with the Kremlin in undermining Navalny’s Smart Voting in Russia.