Nearly half of Russians support Dmitry Medvedev’s resignation
Almost half of the participants in a recent Levada-Center survey have expressed some form of support for Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev’s resignation. Eighteen percent of respondents said they were “definitely for” Medvedev’s resignation, while 27 percent said that there were “likely for” it.
Independent, non-profit sociological research organization Levada-Center, which conducted its survey on April 7-10, also reported that Russians’ trust in Medvedev has noticeably decreased. In April 2017, a mere three percent of respondents said that they “fully trust” Medvedev, compared with nine percent in December 2016. Thirty-three percent the April 2017 survey’s participants said that they “mostly do not trust" the prime minister.
Medvedev’s spokeswoman Natalia Timakova called the Levada-Center poll a “political frame-up”.
“The prime minister does not pay much attention to these [polls], especially those conducted by the Levada-Center as a definite political frame-up,” Timakova said.
The goal of the above survey was to assess Russians’ attitudes towards Medvedev as an individual. Separate studies were conducted to evaluate popular sentiments in regards to his actual work as prime minister. Accordingly, Levada-Center reported that 42 percent of respondents spoke positively of Medvedev’s work as prime minister in April 2017; this was, nevertheless, ten percentage points lower than a month earlier.
These findings come a day after oppositionist leader Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation spoke about the financial documents of the non-governmental organizations listed as part of Medvedev’s “secret empire”. The financial documents of Gradislava, Sotsgosproekt, Dar, and the Foundation for the Support of Winter Olympic Sports appeared on the Ministry of Justice website and revealed that, in 2016, the organizations had a collective expenditure of 3.7 billion rubles (then approximately $61,882,947).
According to Navalny, the Dar Foundation (with an expenditure of 1.5 billion rubles or approximately $25,087,681 in 2016), is the second largest charity in Russia after the Gift of Life foundation, though it is not listed on the Justice Ministry’s registry of non-profit organizations.
On March 2, Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation published an investigation into the houses, yachts, and property used by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. According to the Foundation's report, Russian billionaires Alisher Usmanov and Leonid Mikhelson donated property to non-profit organizations that are connected with Medvedev.
Then, one of the organizations’ heads Ilya Yeliseyev, a former classmate of Medvedev, said that all of companies are engaged in legitimate charitable activities.
Navalny’s foundation previously estimated the total funds listed in the organizations supervised by Medvedev at 70 billion rubles (approximately $1.2 billion).