PUTIN JUGEND….

Close to 10,000 Russian teenagers, wearing Putin t-shirts and carrying posters with slogans like “Youth follows the president,” marched in Moscow on the first anniversary of President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration. The demonstration was the handiwork of Vasily Yakimenko, a political organizer who handled liaison with youth groups for the Kremlin. Yakimenko told the press that the new “Idushiye V’mestye” or “Moving Together” movement has a moral code: no drinking, no cursing, no torturing animals. He told the crowd that they had proudly “turned their faces toward Russia, and their you-know-whats toward the West.”

A demonstrator confessed to a reporter for Kommersant that for taking part in the movement she would get two free movie tickets every week, ten hours of internet access every month, a monthly pass to a swimming pool, aerobics classes and free foreign-language instruction. Not in any Western language, apparently.