President Dmitry Medvedev on Wednesday launched an unprecedented attack on the party that has ruled Russia for the past decade, saying its dominance has left the country stuck in "stagnation." United Russia - whose overall leader is prime minister and Medvedev's Kremlin predecessor Vladimir Putin - has held an overwhelming majority in parliament since its creation in 2001.
Russia's liberals have been sidelined to the point of having no members in parliament and the ruling party controls almost every legislature and governorship across the country's 11 time zones. But Medvedev said the resulting system has made Russia into a monolith that is resistant to productive change and unreceptive to minority voices. "If the ruling party has no chance of ever losing anywhere, it eventually 'bronzes over' and degrades, just like any other living organism that does not move," Medvedev said in a video blog address.