Rostov resident Tatyana Romanenko probably had a dream birthday Thursday, when Prime Minister Vladimir Putin bestowed his congratulations on her in a nationally televised show.
Romanenko, who turned 55, asked Putin for his best wishes in one of the more than 2 million e-mails, phone calls and text messages received by his aides in the run-up to his call-in show. Putin, known to send birthday wishes only to his peers, like Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko or prominent arts and political figures, read out the request from a blue folder where he kept a few messages that he had personally chosen.
On whether he plans to leave politics
“Don’t hold your breath.”
On whether he will run for president in 2012
“I will think about it. There’s plenty of time. … It’s only 2009. The biggest mistake would be to subordinate current work to the interests of a future electoral campaign.”
On when Mikhail Khodorkovsky might get out of jail
“Unfortunately no one remembers that one of the Yukos security service chiefs is now in prison. … It is clear that he acted in the interests of and on the orders of his bosses. … There are at least five proven murders.”
On tandem with President Medvedev
“Good. We graduated from the same university, had the same teachers, who not only gave us the same knowledge but a common approach to life. Those common principles allow us to work efficiently today.”
On Ukrainian Prime Minister Tymoshenko
“I’m not supporting Yulia Tymoshenko in Ukraine’s presidential election. … On a party level, we have special relations with the Party of Regions.”
On terrorism
“We have done a lot to break the spine of terrorism, but the threat has not been fully liquidated. … The threat of terrorism remains very high.”
On Caucasus
“Do events in Ingushetia, Dagestan and other regions signal the start of a new war in the Caucasus? No.”
On financial crisis
“The peak of the crisis has been overcome. … Exit from the crisis requires time, strength and no little funds.”
On state corporations
“They are neither bad nor good. They are a necessity.”
On AvtoVAZ
“We must not lose this [Lada] brand, even if the share of our foreign partners changes.”
On the World Trade Organization
“Accession to the WTO remains our strategic goal, but we have the impression that for some unknown reasons some countries, including the United States, are hindering our accession to the WTO.”
On police
“It’s unacceptable to tar all policemen with the same brush, but the reaction to any negative incidents should be particularly quick and severe.”
On mortgages
“We will support the mortgage market. We will provide an extra 250 billion rubles to help bring interest rates on mortgage credits to 10 to 11 percent as the first step.”
On one-industry towns
“If the situation demands, I will come to you and to any other spot in the country. It is my duty.”
— Reuters
“Dear Tatyana Nikolayevna! With all of my heart, I congratulate you on your 55th birthday and I wish you success,” he said with a smile, drawing applause that prompted him to add, “And everyone who gathered in this audience is joining my congratulations.”
During the record-length show, Putin mixed long discussions of the economy and social benefits with other light-hearted comments, including a promise to provide a computer for every student in a school and the rejection of a proposal to become a “citizen of planet Earth.”
In one minor setback, Putin’s remarkable memory for names and figures failed him when he mistakenly identified one of the owners of struggling automaker AvtoVAZ, to which he devoted a large segment of the show.
He noted that France’s Renault holds a blocking stake in AvtoVAZ, as does state corporation Russian Technologies. Then, speaking hesitantly, Putin said the third 25 percent stake belonged to investment bank Renaissance Capital. In fact, it belongs to its rival, Troika Dialog.
Spokespeople for both banks declined comment on the mistake.
The show lasted four hours and one minute and featured questions from stiff-looking workers at plants that Putin has visited this year, including the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydropower station. He visited the giant dam in Khakasia after 75 people were killed in an accident in August.
Whenever a television presenter asked for questions, just one or two hands would rise among the assembled workers, and then someone would ask a question — usually starting with lavish praise for the prime minister’s efforts to help his or her company. Otherwise, people stood virtually motionless, shoulder to shoulder in a tight crowd, despite the mostly spacious premises of their plants.
A number of the people who asked questions via video link had previously met Putin during his visits. The audience in Gostiny Dvor, where Putin took questions, was filled with employees of Russia’s “main industries” and university students, according to television anchors.
Putin said he stayed up late the previous night to see questions streaming in via the Internet and text messages. Questions continued to pour in during the show, some of them appearing on the ticker line in the audience, asking him casual things such as what Pokemon character he preferred or pleading for help becoming a singer.
Putin did promise assistance in one case.
“Our school has three computers. Could you allocate us some money?” ninth-grader Tatyana Kapnitskaya asked in a written question.
Putin responded that he would act as a good magician from popular Oriental tales for children.
“As long as you reached me, I consider it my duty to respond to your request,” he said.
Putin joked in response to a question about why he looked happier with tigers and leopards than in the company of his ministers.
“The more I know people, the more I like dogs,” he said, before quickly adding that, in fact, he did not think badly about his ministers or friends. “I simply like animals.”
Putin said he thought of every day as his happiest. “The fact that we live is already happiness given to us by the Almighty,” he said.
There was also a display of modesty by Putin, whom Forbes recently ranked as the world’s third-most powerful person. Fielding a question about why great people experience depression and how Putin fights the disease, he said he did not consider himself great and therefore had no depression.
In one of the more colorfully delivered questions from a factory floor, an AvtoVAZ worker responded to an earlier question about why the state was sinking so much money into a bad carmaker. Many Russians ridicule the company’s Lada brand, saying the cars are notoriously poor quality.
“We actually make beautiful cars,” the worker said. “It’s a maneuverable and practical car.” She contradicted herself a moment later, adding, “Yes, in fact, the quality leaves much to be desired, but we need to buy better parts and update our models for it to be better.”
Putin also reacted to a recent drunk driving accident in Switzerland that left an elderly German man badly injured and led to charges against a young Russian who had been behind the wheel of an expensive Lamborghini.
The case shows that Russia has a problem of nouveau riches boasting their wealth, Putin said, likening them to Soviet people who wore golden teeth crowns as a sign of affluence.
“These Lamborghinis and other expensive knickknacks are those golden teeth that I mentioned,” he said. “These people that show off and make a parade of their wealth while millions of Russians live rather modest lives are no different.”
Closer to the end, Putin began answering questions from his blue folder, appearing to have selected most of them for fun. One of them was, “Do you skip stupid questions?”
“I want to ask the author of this: Which category of questions does he think his question belongs in?” Putin replied.
Ending the show, he quoted from another message, “If you want to enter eternity as a citizen of planet Earth, call this contact number.”
This gave Putin a chance to conclude the event on a patriotic tone, just like he did last year, when he proclaimed his love for Russia.
This time he said, “I am proud of being a citizen of the Russian Federation. It is quite enough. Thank you very much for the offer.”
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