The women in the Putin system

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Since the October Revolution of 1917, women in Russia are officially equal to men. In practice, there is still unequal treatment today. For example, women in Moscow were not allowed to work as metro drivers until early 2021. In addition, victims of domestic violence in Russia are not sufficiently protected by the law.

In professional life, many women in Russia reach management positions. That was already apparent years ago: in a study by the American consultancy Grant Thornton into the proportion of women on board floors, Russia came first several times. Some women also belong to the inner circle of power of Russian president Vladimir Putin (70). These are the most important:

Valentina Matviyenko (73) is the third most powerful person in Russia after President Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin (57). Matviyenko has been chairman of the Federation Council, the upper house of the Russian parliament, since 2011. The Federation Council represents the individual member states of the Russian Federation. Unlike the second chamber of parliament, the Duma, the Federation Council cannot be dissolved by the president. Matviyenko was born in 1949 in Shepetivka west of Kiev. Ukraine was then part of the Soviet Union. Matviyenko later studied in Leningrad, Putin’s hometown, now called Saint Petersburg. Matviyenko joined the Communist Party in 1972 and was elected to the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989 as the youngest female deputy. From 2003 to 2011, she served as governor of Saint Petersburg. Matviyenko is considered a supporter and even a possible successor to Putin, sometimes even referred to as his right-hand man.

Irina Yarovaya (56) once worked at the “Open Russia” foundation of opposition oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky (59). Today she is a member of the ruling United Russia party and a security policy hardliner. She is best known as the author of the drastically tightened anti-terror law in Russia. This unofficially bears her name. The “Yarovaya Law” stipulates that Russian telecommunications providers must retain all user calls and messages for six months and allow secret services access at all times. Yarovaya also drafted the “Foreign Agents” law, which requires foreign-funded organizations and media to register. Yarovaya was born in 1966 in Makiivka in what is now eastern Ukraine. At the age of 28, she is said to have become a deputy prosecutor in the eastern Russian region of Kamchatka and at the age of 29 head of the prosecutor’s office’s investigative department. After a career as a regional politician, she was first elected to the State Duma in 2007. Since 2016, she has been deputy chairman of the Duma.

Jelena Misulina (68) sees herself as the guardian of morality. The former Duma deputy and current senator is mainly concerned with family policy. According to “Spiegel”, the Franco-Russian historian Galia Ackerman (74) describes Misulina as “one of the most intolerant people ever”. Misulina is considered the author of the controversial law against homosexual propaganda in Russia. At her initiative, a law was introduced that only provides for administrative sanctions for violence in the family, as long as it leads to “bruises or abrasions” and does not cause serious damage to health. Misulina was born in 1954 in the Russian city of Bui. She studied law at Yaroslavl State University. Misulina was a member of the State Duma from 1995 to 2003 and again from 2007 to 2015, and has been a member of the Federation Council since 2015. She was placed on US and EU sanctions lists for her support of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Marija Zakharova (47) is known in Russia and abroad for her defiant statements on social media. Despite her diplomatic status, she does not always adhere to protocol. Zakharova is one of the most widely read Russian bloggers and is also widely quoted by foreign media. Since 2015, she has been the head of the press service of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Zakharova was born in Moscow in 1975 into a diplomatic family. She spent her childhood in the Chinese capital Beijing, where her parents worked. Zakharova studied at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. Western media nicknamed her “Putin’s main troll”.

The boss of the Russian international broadcaster RT, Margarita Simonjan (42), makes no secret of the fact that she represents a Russian point of view with her medium. Since March 2022, RT content has therefore been censored across the EU. The ban does not apply in Switzerland. Simonyan was born in 1980 to Armenian parents in Krasnodar, South Russia. She comes from a poor family, her father repaired refrigerators, her mother was a housewife. Her parents were both descendants of Armenian refugees. At a young age, Simonyan lived in the United States for a year thanks to a scholarship. She later reported that the experiences there shattered her illusions about the “American way of life” conveyed on television. Simonyan was already working for Russian local media while studying journalism at Kuban State University in Krasnodar. As a “central figure of state propaganda” and because of her close relationship with Putin, she was sanctioned by the West right at the start of the war in Ukraine. (no)

Source: Blick