London, July 6 (IANS) Russian President Dmitry Medvedev is being targeted by a mock twitter account lampooning him.
Just days after Medvedev sent his first microblog from twitter’s offices in California last month, an account called ‘KremlinRussia’ appeared – and swiftly drew more than 1,000 followers, The Telegraph reported.
By Monday, it featured 130 tweets, most of them reacting to entries from Medvedev’s KremlinRussia page.
Although mock accounts like these are common in the West, Russian media outlets are subject to state pressure and street protests are often broken up by police, the report said.
Several of the mock account’s entries predicted that the Kremlin’s modernisation efforts are doomed by Russian bureaucracy and corruption.
‘One needs to understand that money given to modernisation and innovation will be spent on corruption and swindling,’ one tweet said.
Another said a hi-tech hub Russia plans to build near Moscow to nurture innovation would be a haven for the more traditional businesses of gambling and prostitution.
A few tweets took aim at Medvedev himself, including one critical reference to the daily ritual of stopping traffic to let the president’s convoy hurtle through the city.
A Kremlin representative said Medvedev’s administration does not plan to take action to eliminate the account.
‘I think sober people are able to distinguish between the real account and an (imposter),’ the representative said.
