Original subtitles

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This week on Vice:

a closer look at Russia's presidential election.

Russia!

And who did that?

Everybody's saying this election is going very well.

But it's expected that turnout

will be much higher than it was in 2012.

And then, the impact of America's policy

against abortion in Africa.

So you see a direct connection

between decreasing access to contraception

and unsafe abortions going up.

Are you concerned that you're spreading your HIV to your clients?

They're saying that right now, it's time for change.

Accusations of Russian tampering

with the 2016 presidential election,

continue to be a source of controversy here in the United States.

But Russia itself is no stranger to political controversy

with consistent accusations of voter suppression,

ballot stuffing, and even murder of political opponents

not aligned with the state.

This spring, Russian President Vladimir Putin

ran for a fourth term with the potential to become

the longest ruling Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.

We sent Ben Ferguson to Moscow to see firsthand

how democracy is working in Russia.

We've come to the outskirts of Moscow.

This is the Institute of Science

and it's where President Putin is about to cast his vote,

and we're about to witness

what elections look like Russia style.

Who do you think the best president will be for Russia?

We're at the Central Electoral Commission,

which is the body that oversees this election.

Everybody is saying this election is going very well,

and it's expected that turnout will be

much higher than it was in 2012.

When evidence of ballot stuffing appeared on the screens,

the officials responded to it live.

There are videos online of ballot stuffing. Can you explain those?

While this looks like modern democracy in action,

many ordinary Russians are skeptical

about the fairness of the political system here.

No?

Why? Tell me.

What does that mean then,

if this election is being held in a democracy,

but there is definitely only one person that can win.

Vladimir Putin has been in power in Russia since the year 2000.

And his popularity has been driven by his cult of personality.

Fueled by iconic images of him on horseback,

playing hockey with the Russian national team,

and driving racing cars.

His approval ratings are polled at a staggering 80 percent.

But Putin's tenure is also marked

by the suppression of political dissent

and the suspicious murders of his opponents.

Until 2015,

one of the most outspoken critics of Putin

was opposition leader, Boris Nemtsov.

Nemtsov's repeated allegations of corruption

at the highest levels of politics

caught the attention of the Kremlin.

Nemtsov was gunned down within sight of the Kremlin

three years ago.

His mantle was taken up by anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny.

Navalny ran for mayor of Moscow in 2013

and came in second place.

He's rarely spoken with Western media,

because the government uses such appearances

to brand him as pro-Western.

But we were invited to his headquarters

to meet with the head of his anti-corruption foundation,

Roman Rubanov.

Tell us about Navalny.

Why is he the figurehead of this opposition movement?

Navalny has been arrested many times

as police attempt to disrupt his protest movement.

Navalny was arrested on his way

to central Moscow this midday,

and earlier today, police broke into Navalny's office.

The pretext for the break-in was a bomb threat.

- Really? - Yeah.

And who did that?

And are you under total and constant surveillance?

Navalny was convicted of embezzlement in 2013

and received a suspended sentence.

The verdict was found to be unfair

by the European Court of Human Rights,

and was widely seen as retaliation for political activity.

But Russian courts cited the charges

as grounds to disqualify him

from running in the presidential election.

What are the people in this office doing?

'Cause that's the context, isn't it?

Most information channels here in Russia are state-owned.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So the information that people receive is censored.

Alexei Navalny's YouTube channel

has over 350 million views.

How long though do you see

this campaign lasting for for him?

That's not hyperbolic.

There is a precedent that if you oppose the state too strongly...

... you don't live very long.

There have been many critics of Putin who've died

in suspicious circumstances.

Sergei Magnitsky was an anti-corruption lawyer

who died in police custody in 2009.

Anna Politkovskaya was a journalist

who was assassinated in 2006.

But it was Boris Nemtsov's murder

that attracted worldwide attention

and made him a symbol of the dissident movement in Russia.

Alex Navalny's team rang us

to say that he was gonna make an impromptu stop

at the home of Boris Nemtsov.

For some reason, the police are also here.

And it's not just the ordinary police.

It's their specialist division that usually deals

with things like terrorism who've come along as well.

With Navalny out of the race,

the candidate who's attracted the support

of many liberals is Ksenia Sobchak.

Sobchak is a TV personality,

who's worked both as a political journalist

and as the host of a reality show.

To see the campaign of a candidate allowed on the ballot,

we went to her headquarters in Moscow.

Tell me about what it means

to be part of the opposition in Russia.

Well, it's quite tough.

It's risky.

You can be surprised at any moment,

and you never know when this moment comes.

Tomorrow when they don't need,

you know, these elections to...

which should be clean and clear,

they can surprise you any moment.

There can be a raid any moment.

You should be ready for that.

Tell me about why people distinguish

between the so-called real opposition

and the sanctioned opposition.

I think it's a distinction in the minds of the people.

How they distinguish it

is like they see if you're in prison

or if you are killed, then you are real.

Some Russians question

just how real a candidate Sobchak herself is.

I will never vote for Ksenia Sobchak

because she's a daughter of Putin's friend,

and I think she's a part of Putin's system.

Sobchak's father was the mayor of St. Petersburg

and Vladimir Putin's mentor.

It's an association that figures such as Alexei Navalny

find difficult to square with her public role

as opposition candidate.

We've come to the headquarters of Alexei Navalny,

who's doing a live broadcast to his supporters.

His special guest for this live broadcast

is none other than Ksenia Sobchak.

The idea that the Kremlin's goal is

to divide and marginalize the opposition

was confirmed by another presidential candidate,

a veteran conservative politician,

Vladimir Zhirinovsky.

Zhirinovsky is an ultra-nationalist

who's become famous for his anti-Western views

over his three decades in politics.

He's made a career as the right-wing populist of Russian politics.

He's known for his short, violent temper,

and has had physical altercations

on the floor of the legislative assembly.

He's made multiple bizarre appearances on television...

... and has professed his adoration for dictators.

Zhirinovsky ran for president

in five to six Russian elections

since the fall of the Soviet Union

and has placed in the top five each time.

It's believed he's allowed to run

because his extreme anti-Western views

and highly eccentric behavior

mean he's unlikely to threaten

Vladimir Putin's grip on the Kremlin.

And the tactic seems to be working.

Because the result of the election

was a Putin landslide victory.

While Putin won more than three-quarters of the vote,

support for the opposition candidates

who were allowed onto the ballot

proved to be as weak as expected.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky won less than six percent of the vote,

and Ksenia Sobchak won less than two percent.

Vladimir Putin's term now runs to 2024, by which time

he'll be the longest serving Russian leader since Joseph Stalin.

President Putin's turn towards authoritarianism

is part of a larger global trend.

From Turkey to Egypt to Venezuela to China,

strong men leaders are consolidating

and broadening presidential power,

often using the Putin playbook.

Two days before the presidential inauguration,

Alexei Navalny led anti-Putin protests

that erupted across Russia.

Roughly 1,600 people were arrested,

including Navalny himself.

Ura! Ura! Ura!

Just three days after his inauguration,

President Trump signed a memorandum

reinstating what's known as the global gag rule.

While the US has never directly funded abortions overseas,

this policy curbs US funding for abortion-related services.

Historically, Republican administrations have enacted it,

while Democratic ones have repealed it.

However, President Trump's version is unprecedented in scope,

going well beyond reproductive health

and amounting to nearly nine billion dollars in cuts to foreign aid.

If the president continues down this path,

women will be hurt.

As the news cycle moved on

in the days and months following Trump's signing,

the effects of this policy quietly rippled across Africa.

So we sent Gianna Toboni

to track the impact of how this change in US policy

has affected Uganda.

African countries are the largest recipients

of US development aid in the world,

with the majority of funding going towards basic health care

and medical services across the continent.

But as we learned from Dr. Ibembe,

director of programming at Reproductive Health Uganda,

these basic services may now be in jeopardy.

What are the effects of this policy

being put into place?

Fifteen, twenty percent of our funding

has actually been lost as a result of the...

well, we call it the global gag rule.

Is there any area of health care

that is not affected by this policy?

Hmm, I struggle to think about what isn't affected.

Are childbirth services affected?

Yes. Childbirth services are affected, definitely.

- Mammograms? - Mammograms are affected.

Yes.

- Malaria? - Yes, malaria prevention.

- Typhoid? - Yes, exactly, it will be affected.

I think what's most surprising

is that the vast majority of services affected

have nothing to do with abortion.

Yes, that is the irony of the whole thing.

I mean, Uganda is a country that abortion is very restricted,

so there's no reason why,

uh, the Mexico policy should apply to us here.

The global gag rule,

originally known as the Mexico City policy,

was first enacted by President Reagan in 1984.

The original policy required that NGOs agree

that in order to receive any federal funding,

they would neither perform nor actively promote abortion

as a method of family planning.

Since then, every Democratic president has overturned the policy

while every Republican has reinstated it.

The president issued a memorandum

reestablishing the Mexico City policy.

But President Trump did more

than just reinstate the Mexico City policy.

He drastically expanded it.

The new Trump human rights policy

will protect more babies overseas

from the violence of abortion.

Trump's version not only eliminates family planning funding,

it also cuts initiatives that have nothing to do

with abortion or reproductive health.

In total, the new policy puts nearly nine billion dollars

of US health care funding at risk in more than 60 countries.

To better understand the local impact of this policy,

we visited Mulago Hospital,

which has one of the busiest maternity wards in the world.

What types of patients are in the emergency gyne room?

So you see a direct connection

between decreasing access to contraception

and unsafe abortions going up.

How severe are the injuries that women suffer after these abortions?

Wow.

Abortion is already illegal in Uganda,

but now, there may be more abortions performed on the black market

than before the gag rule was put in place.

In fact, Marie Stopes International estimates

that under Trump's version of this policy

an additional 120,000 abortions

will occur by 2020,

and that's just in Uganda alone.

We're right outside of Kampala,

and since US funding has been taken out of these communities,

what we're hearing from local organizations is

that black market abortions have gone way up,

and so we've tracked down a back-street abortionist

who's agreed to talk to us

as long as we conceal her identity.

How long have you been performing abortions?

How often do you have girls coming to you asking for this?

Do you know when your next appointment is?

How far along are you in your pregnancy?

Can I ask why don't you use contraception?

Women have become severely injured

and even died by getting these types of abortions.

Are you concerned for your health and,

um, the consequences of getting an abortion like this?

Has anyone ever died after receiving an abortion from you?

When girls come to you, do you tell them

that they could potentially die by doing this?

Do you feel guilty for what you do?

I mean, that people are getting severely injured

and even dying after... after receiving abortions from you?

Abortions aren't the only thing on the rise

because of the gag rule.

There are also fears of rising HIV infections across Africa,

which had gone down since George W. Bush launched

his emergency plan for AIDS relief,

or PEPFAR, in 2003.

These communities really benefited

from President Bush putting massive amounts of funding

toward HIV/AIDS and there was huge progress as the result of it,

but that progress could very easily be reversed

by President Trump's new policy.

Tracylove is one of the 1.4 million people

living with HIV in Uganda,

the majority of whom depend on anti-retrovirals.

How long have you survived with HIV?

Do you know why you're losing access to treatment?

Tracylove has been the sole provider for her family

since her husband died of AIDS 12 years ago,

and she now fears the worst for her children.

What do you do for work? How do you make money?

But she's not only losing access to her HIV medication,

the new policy also limits US funded NGOs' ability

to provide condoms as well as other health services,

which threatens to increase the spread of the virus.

We're walking with Tracylove through this neighborhood

to what she calls her office.

Um, it's where she brings back clients.

What's your plan tonight?

The rate of HIV among sex workers

is five times the national average,

and US funded NGOs have played a crucial role

in curbing the spread of the virus.

When did you notice that you first lost access to good condoms?

Are you concerned that you're spreading

your HIV to your clients?

Do you think that many people will die

in this community as a result of that?

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