Russian Voting Tinged With Green

MOZHAISK, Russia -- For nearly two months, Dmitry Belanovich woke before dawn to make the two-hour drive from Moscow to this small, bucolic town west of the capital.

Every day, from 6 a.m. until 11 p.m., the burly, bearded environmental inspector campaigned for votes in the snow, working street corners and storefronts, even stopping residents as they picked up milk, trying to persuade them to elect him mayor.

And every night, he drove back to Moscow because the inns in Mozhaisk turned him away. "I was under a certain administrative pressure," he explained, alleging that local officials made it clear that anyone giving him a room would be punished.

But if the odds were against Belanovich as he challenged Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, which dominates and often fixes elections in this country, he built his campaign on an issue that seemed to resonate -- environmental protection. And when the votes were counted March 1, he won in a landslide.

The surprise victory showed that, despite a decade of tightening political controls by the Kremlin, it is still possible to take on Putin's ruling party in a local election and prevail. The win was also a small milestone for Russia's environmental movement, which has struggled against public apathy and government pressure since Putin came to power as president and then prime minister.

Other candidates running on green platforms have won seats on local legislative councils in Russia, but Belanovich is the first to win a mayoral election, his supporters say.

In recent weeks, United Russia's candidates have also lost mayoral contests in the cities of Murmansk and Smolensk, and a volatile race is underway in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, host of the 2014 Winter Olympics, with former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov and maverick billionaire Alexander Lebedev in the running.

The interest in municipal elections may seem misplaced given the limited powers that most Russian mayors enjoy, but these races are among the few remaining venues for open political competition in Russia, said Vladimir Milov, a Nemtsov ally in the democratic opposition movement Solidarity.

"Russia is suffocating from a lack of real, open politics," he said, but mayoral elections offer an outlet for voters to express their frustration with the government -- and for opposition politicians to address concrete problems and prove themselves as effective managers to a skeptical public.

Putin eliminated elections for regional governors, and his government has often blocked opposition candidates and parties from the ballot in federal races. But the Kremlin's ability to influence local elections such as the one in Mozhaisk is limited in part because candidates can bypass its control of the media.

Belanovich, 34, said his bid to become mayor of this town of 70,000 received no coverage on television or in major newspapers. But by speaking to residents directly and distributing campaign brochures, he won 45 percent of the vote, compared with 27 percent for the second-place United Russia candidate. He attributed his victory to his promise to protect the natural ecology of this rural municipality, which he calls the "lungs of Moscow" because nearly half its territory is covered with forests. He campaigned on pledges to block construction along rivers and a major reservoir, clean up a polluting pig farm and promote agriculture and tourism instead of industry.

"It shows that people are growing more concerned about ecological issues, not less," he said of his victory. "People in Mozhaisk aren't indifferent. They understand that a clean environment means a healthy nation."