Harvesting Anger In Putin's Heartland

The Russian president’s opponents are seeking to capitalize on discontent over broken promises to improve health services

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Passengers on the sleek German-made trains racing through the Russian countryside between Moscow and St. Petersburg at more than 140 miles per hour can taste the high life. The dining car’s menu lists a half-bottle of French Champagne and a scoop of black caviar for 10,600 rubles ($163).

They probably don’t take much notice of Okulovka, just over halfway into the four-hour journey. It’s a town in Novgorod, a region where more than a third of the people don’t have running water. Glaring economic disparities are hardly new in Russia. But pockets of disquiet rarely seen in the Vladimir Putin era are now putting Okulovka and similarly depressed towns in the Russian hinterland on the political radar.

Doctors and other hospital staff in the region have been leading protests brought on by the president’s unfulfilled pledge of better pay for healthcare personnel and by service cuts at clinics and hospitals. They’re being supported by a fledgling trade union backed by a leading Kremlin critic.

Putin’s approval rating stands at above 60 percent nationwide, and to many in Novgorod he still can do no wrong. Concern, though, that traditionally loyal sections of the population are turning against the authorities has raised an alarm in the government, two people close to the presidential administration say.

Protests used to be confined to the big cities. Now they’re in Putin’s heartland, often barren places where promises of a better life ring increasingly hollow. Federal statistics released in March showed that more than a third of Russians can’t afford to buy two pairs of shoes a year.