TORONTO - Western leaders have granted Vladimir Putin "democratic credentials" despite the Russian president's tendency to govern his country like a police state, former chess champion-turned-politician Garry Kasparov told Canadian business leaders Tuesday.
"The regime established by Putin and his gang has revived many of the Soviet ways and means," Kasparov said in a luncheon speech to Toronto's Empire Club.
"The glimmer of democracy during Boris Yeltsin's years, however messy, (is) being entirely extinguished... Russia today is a police state masquerading as a democracy."
Kasparov added that Putin "needs the help of the free world" to maintain that illusion and urged the Canadian government and other countries to "stop providing Putin with democratic credentials."
"In Putin's Russia today we have no civil society, no human rights, no rule of law and yet two weeks ago, the leaders of the free world sat down in Germany and treated Vladimir Putin as an equal."
The former chess champion's strong words of condemnation for the Kremlin fall squarely in line with his record of voicing dissent against the Putin administration.
In April, Kasparov, who is chairman of Russia's United Civil front, was arrested along with 170 demonstrators at a 5,000-strong march in Moscow.
The following month, he was prevented by police from boarding a flight to Samara, where he planned to take part in a protest march coinciding with a Russia-EU summit.
Kasparov, who described himself to his Toronto audience as an organizer for a broad, non-ideological coalition of opposition groups called The Other Russia, said the pro-democracy movement is struggling against Putin's "increasingly authoritarian regime."
In the Russian president's "low-profile police state," reforms have been implemented in small increments so that the West will "say little and do nothing," Kasparov said.
After the march in Moscow, Kasparov said the extremism law was updated to allow for criminal charges and possible prison time for any statement critical of a government official.
Kasparov said that journalists and dissenters face intimidation, harassment and sometimes worse, noting that two of Putin's harshest critics were murdered, and over a dozen journalists have been assassinated since the start of 2006.
Kasparov expressed dismay that Western leaders have not taken Putin to task for the worsening situation in Russia.
"Canada, the U.S. and Europe are doing a lot of business with China, but nobody is rushing to call Chinese leaders democrats," he said.
Earlier this month, an expression of concern about the state of democracy in Russia at the Group of Eight summit meeting prompted a spirited exchange between Prime Minister Stephen Harper and President Vladimir Putin.
Putin showed little sympathy for Harper's dismay over recent developments - which include some of Putin's detractors being poisoned, shot in the head or falling from five-storey windows.
Putin has been dismissive of criticism that he's anti-democratic and often turns the tables on his accusers by pointing out the human-rights failures in their own countries.
On Tuesday, Kasparov described Putin's government as a "21st Century Iron Curtain," where the consolidation of power has lead to a "super-presidency and with the puppet parliament and judiciary.
During his speech, Kasparov also lashed out at the United States and the United Nations.
He criticized the Bush administration for what he called a lack of strategy in Iraq, suggesting that restoring trans-Atlantic solidarity, standing up to Iran and dealing with nations who support terrorism and extremism was more important than simple troop withdrawal.
Kasparov called the UN an outdated cold war organization whose mission became obsolete after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
"After the Cold War, we need new organizations that are based on new global dividing lines, the lines of the value of human life and democracy," he said.
"The old stalemate diplomacy of the Cold War will not help us against suicide bombers."
