On March 21, Ekho Moskvy radio polled its audience with a rather provocative question: “How would you react if Russia got the same treatment that Libya is getting?” The results were bizarre, no matter how you looked at them. More than a third of the online respondents (36.6 percent) said they would accept it. The call-in voters — an older and less well-educated audience — were even more radical: More than 80 percent said they would consent to Western intervention.
Although these results cannot be called representative, they vividly reflect Russian citizens’ fatigue and loss of hope in change for the better. The similarities between the situations in Libya and Russia make any discussion about the Middle East essentially a discussion about conditions inside Russia. A prime example of this was a dispute in statements made by the country’s two leaders.
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