Nashi

The first ever Zenith Global Citizenship Conference, an initiative designed to build leadership and inspiration in youth between the ages of 15 and 25, will take place at the River Rock Resort Casino next week.

About 5,000 members of the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi gathered at Vasilievsky Spusk beneath Red Square in Moscow this morning to celebrate the landslide victory claimed by the Unified Russia party and President Vladimir Putin, who was running as its top candidate.

Pro-Kremlin youth groups, backed by police, are in the final stages of preparations to inundate the city with tens of thousands of loyal teens with orders to prevent an Orange-style revolution in the lead-up to the Dec. 2 State Duma elections.

We are seeing a definite "Brezhnevization" of politics. This became obvious after United Russia's recent congress and President Vladimir Putin's elaborate 55th birthday celebration. This phenomenon continues to excite the media and the public. Radio stations Ekho Moskvy and Radio Svoboda have repeatedly commented upon state television's sycophantic coverage of Putin. They continue to receive calls from listeners disturbed by the praises on television that have clearly gone beyond all reasonable boundaries.

MOSCOW — Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov has appointed Vasily Yakemenko, leader of pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi, to head the newly established State Committee for Youth Affairs, the White House press service said Wednesday.

They have been called "Putin's Generation" and "neo-Komsomol." They have served as evidence of a rising Russian fascism. But little reporting about Nashi in English goes beyond what its Commissars give reporters. The following interview gives a different picture.

Thousands of Pro-Putin youth activists attending a summer camp in central Russia have been hearing warnings that western values are "evil".