"Many people in my country are on the side of president Putin: of course they are. The Kremlin actually controls the majority of the mass media. If president Bush could do the same in the United States, the polls would all be in his favour". Garry Kasparov, known for having been the long-unbeaten chess champion, lately entered the political arena in his country. From Strasbourg, invited by the president of the European Parliament, Hans-Gert Poettering, he launched the campaign for the president’s election in March 2008 with the coalition "The other Russia". Poettering explains: "The EU Parliament is neither with Putin nor against Putin and does not support any party in Russia’s internal electoral dispute. But as MEPs we have a duty to side with democracy and with the Constitutional state, which instead we see threatened in Moscow". Kasparov had been arrested in mid-April for taking part in a public demonstration and on May 18th he had been stopped at Moscow airport as he was going to Samara for the EU-Russia summit. "In our country he explains , fundamental freedoms are not respected, and human rights are endangered every day". (continued)
