MOSCOW — Vladimir Putin’s annual TV call-in show revealed just how far Russian politics have become a one-man show.
Over the three-hour session Thursday, the Russian president showcased the booming economy, belittled America’s troubles in Iraq and pledged to modernize the armed forces – implicitly projecting himself as the man who has restored Russia to greatness.
The tightly choreographed event underscored a dominance that had led many people to predict he plans to remain in control even after giving up the presidency next year.
Putin, who is wildly popular among Russians for the stability and relative prosperity he helped engineer, has used his five previous call-in shows, along with lavish television coverage of his travels and speeches, to project an image of a leader responding directly to voters’ concerns.
Some observers said Putin’s comments essentially were campaign rhetoric, designed to whip up votes for his United Russia party and telling voters exactly what they want to hear – pensions are rising, military spending is going up and the economy is strengthening.
He sought to reassure the public about his departure, saying his successor should “keep the stable course of our nation and continuity in realizing the plans that have been devised in recent years.”
None of the nearly 50 questions he tackled directly asked outright about his plans for the future. But his message of continuity may have been a signal that his dominance will continue after next year.
On Thursday, Putin again reaffirmed he would step down as president in May. But he has left the door open to becoming prime minister, recently announcing that he will head United Russia’s election list in the December parliamentary elections.
Official doubts bodies were from Stalin purges
MOSCOW — The remains of nearly three dozen people unearthed in Moscow are probably at least 100 years old, contradicting earlier indications that they could have been victims of Josef Stalin’s political purges, an investigator said Thursday.
Workers rebuilding a 19th-century Moscow house earlier this month discovered the remains of an estimated 34 people. At the time, the chief Moscow police spokesman said that the remains appeared to date to the 1930s and that some had been shot in the head. Historians said the remains most likely were victims of Stalin’s political purges.
But a government investigator, Sergei Buluchevsky, said preliminary forensic findings indicated the remains were at least a century old and that there were no signs of violent death, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported.
In the 1930s, the Soviet Union experienced a wave of political killings and purges of the government and Communist Party orchestrated by Stalin’s secret police. An estimated 1.7 million people were arrested in 1937-38, and at least 818,000 of them were shot, according to Arseny Roginsky, a Moscow historian.
The site where the remains were found is several hundred yards from Lubyanka, the headquarters of the KGB.
The Associated Press
