He joked and menaced, flirted and growled with all the bravado of a
sharp-tongued street-fighter who knows that he has seen off every challenge.
Brimming with confidence throughout a marathon performance at his farewell
annual Kremlin press conference as President, Vladimir Putin left no doubt
yesterday that he would retain control in Russia long after he stood down.
He awarded himself full marks for achievement during his eight-year rule and
said that he would stay on as a powerful prime minister throughout the term
of his chosen successor, Dmitri Medvedev. He said that he had set goals for
Russia until 2020.
Mr Putin insisted that he was not “addicted” to power and had never considered
changing the Constitution to run for a third consecutive term. He spoke in
unusually personal terms about the pressures of office and his faith in God.
“Power is the most addictive, intoxicating thing but I have never been
addicted to anything. I think if God gave me the right to work for my
country, and I have always very much felt this connection between myself and
God, then I should be grateful for that,” Mr Putin said. “To cover myself
with more medals or assume some sort of exalted throne, to try to stay on
for ever, is absolutely unacceptable.”
The President answered almost 100 questions without a break for 4 hours and 40
minutes in front of more than 1,000 journalists. At times, it came close to
a Valentine's Day love-in, and when a young woman announced that she had a
heart-shaped card for him to mark the occasion, he called her forward to
pass it to his assistant.
Mr Putin punctuated his answers with colourful phrases, delivered with astute
comic timing that frequently brought applause from his audience. He
dismissed newspaper reports that he had $40 billion (£20 billion) in secret
bank accounts as claims “excavated from someone's nose and then spread on
those bits of paper”.
Saying that he had worked “like a galley slave” throughout his presidency, he
declared: “Heads of state have no right to whinge, or drool for any reason.
If they are going to slobber and blow snot and say things are bad, bad, then
that's how it will be.”
Asked to guarantee that rumours of a new rouble denomination were untrue, Mr
Putin responded: “Do you want me to eat soil from a flowerpot? Make an oath
in blood?”
The President was equally cutting about the refusal of the Organisation for
Security and Co-operation in Europe to send a mission to monitor the Russian
presidential elections on March 2. He accused Western observers of trying to
teach Russia the meaning of democracy, adding: “Well, let them teach their
own wives to cook borscht.”
When a young woman journalist asked him about the declining population of
Russia and said that she hoped to have a child, Mr Putin shot back to
laughter: “That's good, but what does it have to do with me?”
Amid the banter he had harsh words for the West and a clear message that he
would be in charge when Mr Medvedev, 42, was President. He said: “The
highest executive power in the country is the government of the Russian
Federation headed by the Prime Minister.”
Mr Putin said that he and Mr Medvedev enjoyed a personal chemistry and that he
would never have supported him “if he needed coddling and advice on how to
behave”. However, he saw no need to hang Mr Medvedev's presidential portrait
in his office, having been head of state himself.
Asked how long he would remain Prime Minister, Mr Putin said: “The position of
the head of Russia's Government cannot be transitional ... As long as Dmitri
Anatolyevich [Medvedev] works in the role of President, and if I see that I
am achieving the goals I myself set out for me ... then I would work as long
as it's possible.”
He continued: “There is enough power. Dmitri and I will share it, if the
voters allow us to do so. And as for our personal relations, I can assure
you there will be no problems.”
Mr Putin said that European countries should be ashamed of their double
standards for supporting the independence of Kosovo from Serbia while
denying recognition to separatists elsewhere.
Mr Putin's charming façade also slipped when he was asked about comments by
Hillary Clinton, the US presidential contender, that he could not possess a
soul as a former KGB officer. He replied: “A state official should at least
have brains.”
He insisted that Russia had no desire to return to a Cold War with the West.
However, he declared that Russia would aim nuclear missiles at Poland, the
Czech Republic and even Ukraine if the US installed a missile defence shield
in Eastern Europe.
“We are asking them to stop and no one is listening to us. So if they continue
we will have to react appropriately. We have given a warning beforehand,” he
said.
Reflected on his legacy as President, Mr Putin said that he had answered the
question about who he was “not by words but by my deeds in the last eight
years”. He contrasted the current Russian economic boom and sharply rising
living standards with the situation in the 1990s when “we didn't have a
united country - we didn't even have a national anthem”.
The showman leader:
Last August, Mr Putin took off his shirt to bare his manly physique while on a
fishing trip in southern Russia with Prince Albert II of Monaco
In 2005 he encouraged President Bush to drive him around the grounds of his
presidential dacha outside Moscow in his vintage 1956 Volga car
He demonstrated his prowess as a judo black belt by fighting in a televised
exhibition with Japanese masters during the G8 summit of world leaders in
Okinawa in 2000
He flew to war-torn Chechnya as co-pilot in a fighter jet just before the 2000
presidential elections, emerging from the cockpit in a leather jacket and
helmet
As Prime Minister in 1999, he told journalists: “We’ll follow terrorists
everywhere. Should we catch them in a s***house, we’ll kill them in a
s***house.” In a 2005 address to parliament, he described the collapse of
the Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”
“There is no such thing as a former KGB man,” Mr Putin, once a KGB officer,
told agents of the Federal Security Service, the successor to the KGB, at a
dinner in December 2005
