Opposition leader Boris Nemtsov released a report Tuesday titled "Putin. Results" in which he assails Vladimir Putin's decade in power as a period of soaring corruption, dwindling population and crumbling infrastructure.
Nemtsov and his co-author, Vladimir Milov, both leaders of the Solidarity opposition movement, write that under Putin, the country's economy became ever more dependant on natural resources while social inequality rose to unseen peaks.
They blast wasteful government spending on high-risk projects like the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics and renew allegations that Putin is a secret benefactor of the Geneva-based oil trader Gunvor, controlled by his close ally Gennady Timchenko.
They also claim that the number of terrorist attacks has risen sixfold, while the government's support of corrupt leaders in the North Caucasus has placed the largely Muslim region outside of Moscow's control.
The authors mention President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin's handpicked successor, only in passing. "Putin continues to be the key figure in Russian politics, and the course he set during eight years [as president] has practically not changed," the report says.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Tuesday that he could not comment on the report because he had not read it.
Nemtsov, who was governor of Nizhny Novgorod in the 1990s before serving as first deputy prime minister in 1997 and 1998, published a similar report before the end of Putin's second presidential term in 2008. Putin was president from 2000 until 2008, when he took the post of prime minister.
The 32-page report, titled "Putin. Results," was published online at Putin-itogi.ru and printed 1 million times as a booklet.
Nemtsov made headlines last year when he was taken to court by Mayor Yury Luzhkov after publishing "Luzhkov. Results," in which he accused the mayor of allowing Moscow to become a center of corruption. The Moscow City Court in February ordered Nemtsov to pay $16,000 in damages to Luzhkov.
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