Putin Youth

This has an unpleasantly familiar ring:

The sun rises over several hundred tents next to blue lakes. At the stroke of 7am, large speakers blare Soviet-era patriotic songs and bright-eyed youths emerge for another day of physical and ideological instruction.

This is the first summer-camp of Nashi (Ours), a youth organisation set up by the Kremlin this year to support President Putin. It has assembled 3,000 teenagers from across Russia for two weeks of fun, training and political indoctrination.

The organisers have spared no expense. They pay for all travel expenses, the rent of the idyllic location 200 miles north of Moscow, the tents, sailing and motor boats, hundreds of bicycles, ping-pong tables, a weights room, an internet café, an art studio, a twice-daily newspaper, a camp radio service, and concerts by some of the most popular Russian pop acts, such as Zemfira and B2.

The head of Nashi, Vasili Yakemenko, a former Kremlin bureaucrat, says the camp cost “far, far more” than $500,000 (£285,000) and was paid for by donations from big business. “We ask them to support the creation of a new political and managerial elite for the country. If they refuse, it’s considered unpatriotic,” he adds.

Between the ping-pong and aerobics, the youngsters receive ideological instruction from Kremlin advisers. Gleb Pavlovsky, the Kremlin spin doctor who advised Viktor Yanukovych on his failed election campaign in Ukraine, tells them that the Orange Revolution there was a foreign plot, and that President Yushchenko was poisoned by his supporters to win sympathy.

He tells them that Russia’s foreign and internal enemies will try to instigate a similar revolution here. “A revolution is a coup. They (the US) have tried it before, and soon they will try it here, perhaps as early as the Moscow Duma elections this autumn. Your job is to defend the constitutional order if and when the coup comes.”