President Vladimir Putin on Thursday gave his most upbeat assessment yet of Russia’s booming economy, but refused to say who will run the world’s largest country when he steps down next year.
Putin hailed Russia’s recent economic achievements and said that under his leadership, wages, living standards and pensions had all gone up. But he conceded that many people in Russia still lived ”very, very modestly”. His priority until he steps down in March 2008 would be to reduce social inequality, he said.
Putin made his remarks in his annual Kremlin press conference — a marathon event, which this year lasted a record three hours and 32 minutes. Speaking before 1 000 journalists packed into a Kremlin auditorium, Putin gave an assured and sometimes witty performance, fielding questions on energy policy, corruption, vodka and even gardening.
There were moments of Berlusconi-style flirtation. Asked whether he would like to go skiing in the Arctic city of Murmansk, Putin told one attractive young female journalist: ”Are you asking me in a personal or official capacity?” She replied ”both”. He then quipped: ”What’s your name?”
But there were few clues as to who is likely to take over from Putin. He declined to endorse either of the frontrunners: the first Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev, and the Defence Minister, Sergei Ivanov. Putin said he would leave it up to the voters to decide.
”There will not be a successor. There will be candidates for the presidency,” he insisted, adding that he expected his successor to continue the same ”trends”.
Thursday’s press conference was largely stage managed. But it comes at a time when Russia’s international image has been battered by the unsolved killings of two of the Kremlin’s biggest critics: the journalist Anna Politkovskaya and the former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko.
Asked if he believed they had been murdered in a plot to discredit the Kremlin, Putin replied: ”I don’t believe in the conspiracy thesis.” He paid grudging tribute to Politkovskaya as a ”rather sharp critic” of his government, which is ”good”.
But he was scathing about Litvinenko — poisoned in London on November 1 with polonium-210. ”He knew no state secrets at all. He had said all the negative things he could say about his service, so there could not be anything new in his actions. What exactly happened must be established during an investigation,” he said.
Putin also defended Russia’s decision to charge market prices for gas and oil to its post-Soviet neighbours — the source of bitter disputes with Ukraine last year, and Belarus last month. Moscow had previously subsidised neighbouring states but was not going to any more, he said.
Putin talked glowingly of Russia’s economic transformation during his eight years in power. Buoyed by rising world oil and gas prices, Russia now belonged to the world’s 10 leading economies, he said, adding that last year it had enjoyed a growth rate of ”6,7 to 6,9%”. Since 1999 inflation had gone down from 36,5% to 9%, he added.
Russia had recently paid off $22-billion in foreign debt — and was now sitting on a cash mountain of $8-billion. The money was being saved up in case oil prices fell dramatically, Putin said. ”This isn’t going to happen,” he added reassuringly. – Guardian Unlimited Â