Russia for the last 8 years has benefited from America's war on terrorism, with high fluctuating oil prices and the stranglehold of gas supplies to Europe from central Asian states. Most of the economic growth was also from the maturation of many reforms passed under Yeltsin. Putin's strong stance against Chechnya and dismantling of oligarchy wins favour with the Russian public. Anything is possible for the people of Russia as long as they do not think of becoming involved politically against the Putin's KGB cadre.

However with the economy now entering recession people's lives will be affected, Putin froze the prices before elections earlier in the year, dissent would rise as the illusion of economic growth now fades and change is pushed for. The Kremlin will come down hard on anybody who will start to resist. This is the reality of State Managed Democracy in Russia.

More:
The Rise of Pro-Putin Youth
Putin Warns Countries Not To Interfere With Russian Affairs
Why Democracy: Russia's Village of Fools
ex-KGB spy speaking against Putin shortly before his death
Real News: Eric Margolis comments on Putin and Russia's Duma
Russians back Putin, Russian Elections deemed a 'farce'
Suppression of Opposition Groups in Russia
Putin's Message to the West
Death of a Nation: Russia in 2006 by Marcel Theroux
Kasparov on Maher--Being Very Clever
Panorama - The poisoning of Litvinenko
Russians mark Anna Politkovskaya's Murder

DEC 14 2008 MOSCOW— The Russian police detained dozens of antigovernment protesters attempting to hold an unsanctioned rally in Moscow on Sunday.

Police officers and armored riot control personnel prevented the planned protest in central Moscow from materializing, in the latest sign that public expression of dissent against the authorities would not be tolerated under President Dmitri A. Medvedev any more than it had been under his predecessor, Vladimir V. Putin.

As many as 100 people were detained, including Eduard Limonov, the head of the banned National Bolshevik Party, said a spokeswoman for Other Russia, a coalition of opposition groups led by Mr. Limonov and the former chess champion Garry Kasparov, among others. The police said that about 10 people were detained during a similar protest in St. Petersburg, Interfax reported.
The Moscow demonstration was meant as a protest of the Kremlin’s handling of the financial crisis and its plans to change the Constitution to extend presidential and parliamentary term limits. Government critics say such a move could be used to extend the authority of Mr. Putin, who is now prime minister, and possibly lead to his early return to the presidency.

Mr. Putin, while he has said Mr. Medvedev will remain president until his term ends in 2012, has not ruled out running for a third term after that.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/world/europe/15russia.html?_r=1

Again, You wanna see what you WANNA see, that being me and you both.

There's all kinds of information flying left and right and 'facts' they claim. And I remember at one point Litvinenko going as far as accusing Putin of a pedophile and a rapist. I mean, what the crap is all this?? That surely adds to his legitimacy.

To me, this is no different than 9/11 conspiracy theorists coming up with really convincing 'evidence' of a staged attack on world trade center. You distrust the government and don't agree with their policies, so anything that fits the scenario sounds very plausible. And smart people make it sound really really convincing.

This is why I always have a reason of doubt when it comes to this type of genres. A nation's president having direct hand in Assassination etc etc. You hear a lot of that in Latin American politics as well (not just Hugo Chavez). And it makes them paranoid as heck, and start coming up with all these crazy facts about US government and such.

To be fair, they too have legit reasons as to why they distrust US government. After all, CIA agents did assassinate a truck load of South American leaders for a long time. But to go as far as claiming that 'US president personally ordered this assassination of my next door neighbor' and such, really doesn't make sense.

So in Russian case, I see it the same way. And that is why I always try to be level headed and see it from a different perspective other than 'the government LIES TO YOU!' (be it American or Russian) type of deal.

And I'm not calling you a conspiracy theorist. I'm just stating the reason why I am skeptical about all these claims.

Anna Politkovskaya was not an "ultra liberal crazy" as you put it, she was in fact one of the few journalists who dared questioned the official line from the Kremlin, she asked the questions that no one dare asked and was submitting to various acts of harrassement by the state who viewed her reportage as dangerous.

Politkovskaya made her name reporting from lawless Chechnya, where many journalists and humanitarian workers have been kidnapped or killed. She was arrested and subjected to mock execution by Russian military forces there, and she was poisoned on the way to Beslan, but survived and continued her reporting. She authored several books about Chechen wars and Putin's Russia and received numerous prestigious international awards for her work.

Her numerous articles critical of the war in Chechnya described abuses committed by Russian military forces, by Chechen rebels, and by the Russian-backed Chechen administration led by Akhmad Kadyrov and his son Ramzan Kadyrov. Politkovskaya chronicled human rights abuses and policy failures in Chechnya and elsewhere in Russia's North Caucasus in several books on the subject, including A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya and A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya, which painted a picture of brutal war in which thousands of innocent citizens have been tortured, abducted or killed at the hands of Chechen or federal authorities."

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya

She wrote:

"We are hurtling back into a Soviet abyss, into an information vacuum that spells death from our own ignorance. All we have left is the internet, where information is still freely available. For the rest, if you want to go on working as a journalist, it's total servility to Putin. Otherwise, it can be death, the bullet, poison, or trial - whatever our special services, Putin's guard dogs, see fit."

And if you highly doubt that the Kremlin or Putin would order the assassination of a rogue reporter then I think you missed the poisoning of FSB dissident Alexander Litvinenko by Polonium-210:

As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services."

Or are British authorities "fantasy level conspirators" as well? I think your personal admiration of Putin's usurpation of power is interfering with your ability to discern the facts.

On August 28th 2007 it was announced that 10 people were arrested in connection to her murder:

"Controversy arose because the prosecutor, Yuri Y. Chaika, suggested that the motive for killing had not been to silence Ms. Politkovskaya, whose efforts to uncover corruption and brutality under President Vladimir V. Putin had brought her international acclaim but scorn from officials here.

Rather, the prosecutor said, the killing was intended to discredit the Kremlin, by raising suspicions that it had been involved, and ultimately to destabilize the Russian state. That now-official theory is markedly different from one broadly accepted by her peers, who have said she was killed in retaliation for her work or to prevent additional articles from being published.

Among those arrested, the prosecutor said, were a police major and three former police officers, who were working with a criminal gang led by a Chechen. Also arrested, he said, was a former officer in the F.S.B., the principal successor to the K.G.B.

Mr. Chaika added that the killing had been ordered from abroad, although he refused to identify the man suspected of being the mastermind or disclose his whereabouts, and provided no evidence to support the claim. The prosecutor would not release the names of any of the suspects.

His description of the motive aligned neatly with Mr. Putin's first public statements about the killing last year and with a pattern of government contentions that foreigners were trying to undermine Russia and the Kremlin, and to tarnish their reputations."

- NYT

It was standard Soviet practice to blame any problems that occur within its borders on foreign influences in the past. The press brief went on to state the murders were designed to destabilize the political situation in Russia and blame the Kremlin for it. This is totally ridiculous considering that the only people to benefit from her death was the Kremlin and specifically Putin himself.

Alexander Litvinenko, the ex-FSB Lt.Col and dissident accused Vladimir Putin of personally ordering the assassination of Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya. He himself was poisoned on November 1st of 2006, via lethal dose of polonium-210. As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.

"The Kremlin press pool is a handpicked group of reporters, most of whom work for the state and the rest selected for their fidelity to the Kremlin's rules of the game. Helpful questions are often planted. Unwelcome questions are not allowed. And anyone who gets out of line can get out of the pool.

The Kremlin press pool is like so many institutions in Russia that have the trappings of a Western-style pluralistic society but operate under a different set of understandings, part of what analyst Lilia Shevtsova of the Carnegie Moscow Center calls "the illusion of democracy." Television channels air newscasts with fancy graphics but follow scripts approved by the Kremlin. Elections are held, but candidates out of favor with the Kremlin are often knocked off the ballot. Courts conduct trials, but the state almost never loses. Parliament meets but only to rubber-stamp Kremlin legislation.

Putin offered an example of that at the news conference when defending his decision last fall to abolish elections of regional governors. "The leaders of the regions of the Russian Federation will not be appointed by the president," he said. They will be approved by "regional parliaments, which are directly chosen by secret ballot." Putin compared this to the Electoral College, which selects U.S. presidents. "It is not considered undemocratic, is it?"

In fact, under the new system, Putin will appoint governors. His selections have to be ratified by regional legislatures, but if such a legislature rejects his choice twice, it will be dissolved. As for secret ballots, Russian regional leaders have proved adept at generating the outcomes they wish.

Anna Politkovskaya was just one of the dozens of reporters to meet their end during the reign of Putin, yet the press which is 80% state controlled dare not question the official line from Kremlin. She was murdered on October 7th 2006, which also happened to be Putin's birthday.

"Russia is yet another country where a free press is upheld in the language of the constitution, but the reality is one of state control of expression, concentration of media in the hands of the very few and very rich, and violence against journalists who report on crime and corruption.

Vladimir Putin's tenure has been marked by firm and incremental moves by the state against press freedom and independence. In some cases, the Putin government's strategies are relatively direct, such as strict controls on reporting in Chechnya. Other approaches -- such as the targeting of journalists with politically-motivated libel suits, or hostile takeovers of key media outlets by businessmen with close ties to Putin himself -- are more subtle, yet consistent and effective strategies for ensuring that the state influence permeates the media at all levels.

The strategy has resulted in the takeover of a prominent and outspoken, independent, national television station and the consolidation of newspaper and magazine ownership under a handful of powerful oligarchs. While an independent press does exist in Russia, the overall effect has been to stifle criticism of Putin and his regime on key issues like government corruption and abuses in Chechnya. Media support for the Putin government was particularly evident in the parliamentary elections in spring of 2004, during which Russian press groups complained of state-dominated television's promotion of the pro-Kremlin parties.

The right to free expression is more flagrantly violated at the local level, where journalists who report on corrupt politicians and organized crime are routinely harassed, attacked, and sometimes murdered, with generally only a perfunctory and thoroughly flawed prosecution to follow. A noteworthy case is the murder of the editor-in-chief of an independent newspaper in Togliatti, an industrial city in the Volga River region, in October of 2003. It was the second murder of the editor of the very same publication in less than two years. The following investigation has been denounced as a sham."

- Source http://www.pbs.org/

I watched the main prosecutors briefing on PTP Planet in Russian that morning. The rhetoric, method of presentation, hostile opposition to any questions by the press left no doubt in my mind that it was simply a political ploy to ease criticism of the Putin government with regards to the murders. Suddenly after years of inaction not one, but several murders are explained away neatly, however neither actual motives, names of other suspects nor any concrete evidence backing up the claims were presented.

For more on Russian subversion of democracy I recommend you check out my sift - http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Rise-of-Pro-Putin-Youth