MOSCOW, December 20. /ITAR-TASS World Service/. All central Russian newspapers are reporting and commenting on a major annual news conference, which Russian President Vladimir Putin held on Thursday.
“The answers during a four-hour news conference showed that Vladimir Putin still believes the liberals and the off-system opposition as his main opponents, and long-standing parties and conservative forces are a stronghold of the incumbent Russian authorities,” Vedomosti daily reported. “He did not name his rivals, but speaking on the election in Moscow and about Alexei Navalny he stated that the election helped him “to realize real needs of people” and helped the Russian population to learn what a candidate really offers apart from scolding at the incumbent authorities. “Catch the thief,” are usually crying out those who had stolen something themselves, Putin noted. “But the president did not deny that the consultations were held with him over the list of candidates and acknowledged sincerely that if Navalny had posed a threat, he would not have been permitted to run in the elections. And it would be done not in administrative way, but in political way,” the daily noted.
Putin voiced his attitude to the liberals, contemplating about the violence towards the police that representatives of the liberal forces allow to take place, Vedomosti daily noted. “It is easy to imagine the situation, when representatives of other political groups will go out in the streets, say, they will be the nationalists, and will begin beating this liberal intelligentsia ,” the president noted.
“The parliamentary opposition parties - the Communist Party of Russia and the A Just Russia Party - and their leaders Gennady Zyuganov and Sergei Mironov and already after them - the United Russia Party headed by Dmitry Medvedev, deserved praise from the president,” the daily added. “Medvedev’s government works satisfactorily and has not realized its full potential yet, Putin stated. But he avoided the reply to the questions whether he has a successor and whether Medvedev may become such figure,” the daily reported.
“Putin’s responses about the government reject the rumors about his soon resignation, the president put it clearly that Medvedev had taken up a correct path of the technical prime minister,” Vedomosti daily quoted political expert Yevgeny Minchenko as saying.
External threats remain unchanged, just after the change of power in Georgia Putin’s attitude to the country’s leadership had changed. Now the countries can improve bilateral relations and cancel the visa regime, the Russian leader noted. The president said most cordial words about “fraternal Ukraine”, as Russia gives assistance to the country, not only because it is profitable to it, but also over particularly close relations between the two peoples.
U.S. missile defense remains the main foreign threat for Russia, the daily noted. Putin did not like that U.S. President Barack Obama had avoided responsibility for the bugging case by the National Security Agency (Edward Snowden was given praising comments), but the work of the security services is aimed at the struggle against terrorism.
“The presidential news conference has brought two important pieces of news,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily reported. “First, Putin does not intend to dismiss the government. Secondly, Putin will most likely try to settle the Khodorkovsky affair and leave it in the past.”
“At the news conference, Putin has dispelled several myths, which had been disturbing the minds of the democrats,” the daily noted. “He stated firmly that the mayors will be elected. And he put it clearly that the shuffle haste in the Russian government is not expected. The president also came out for the municipal filter. He warned the liberals strictly that if they continue to protect the defendants in the Bolotnaya massive disorder case so zealously, no one will be left to protect them from the nationalists soon,” the daily reported.
“Putin poses himself as a convinced conservatively minded person more and more purposefully,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily said in its editorial article. “At the question-and-answer session with the journalists it became clear that the president spreads his conservative position not only on the protection of traditional values (primarily the traditional idea about the family and the role of religion in the society), but also on the protection of the well-established political parties,” the daily reported.
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