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segunda-feira, 22 de junho de 2015

An interview with Vladimir Putin: An exercise in control

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with AFP's Florence Biedermann, centre, and PA Chief Executive Clive Marshall during a St. Petersburg International Investment Forum in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Jun 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)

Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with AFP’s Florence Biedermann, centre, and PA Chief Executive Clive Marshall during a St. Petersburg International Investment Forum in St.Petersburg, Russia, Friday, Jun 19, 2015. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko)


ST. PETERSBURG, Russia – When a heads of a world’s vital news agencies sat down a year ago with Vladimir Putin during a St. Petersburg palace, they were treated to a long, wealthy plate of Crimean flounder, a plate evidently selected not usually for a sweetmeat though for a domestic statement.


This year it was tea and caviar during a cadence of midnight in a wood-panelled library.


The Russian boss had only finished a whirlwind of back-to-back meetings on a sidelines of his showcase mercantile forum, an eventuality where he also delivered a marathon question-and-answer opening underneath a folksy mediation of CBS News publisher Charlie Rose.


He apologized for being hours late for a assembly with news group heads.


If we speak to other universe leaders or a Russian media, Putin is always late — a thoughtfulness maybe of his punishing report as most as a proof of who is in charge.


Putin’s handlers and officials from a state-run news group kept a news bosses bustling with a debate of a presidential library and archive.


Even still, a dozen invited news executives, whose editors and reporters figure open opinion from Washington to Delhi, were given a photo-emblazoned library label extenuation them 100 years of entrance to a place.


The Canadian Press, The Associated Press, and Reuters were among a news services that took part.


Putin was loose and cooperative via a hour-long bid to favour his picture — both during home and among an increasingly suspicious, if not undisguised antagonistic general audience.


But a confident and dynamic courting of news group heads that typified a same practice final year was transposed with a toned-down, solemn air.


To Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s determined critique over Ukraine and suggested life-time anathema from a G8, he started his answer by saying: “I don’t wish to provoke anyone.”


Yet, his altogether messages were frequency conciliatory.


“If a United States says Russia should be returned to a G8, a primary apportion will change his opinion,” Putin continued, following adult his initial response with a forked message.


With a euphoria of Crimea’s “return” dimming for a recession-weary public; a grinding, unwashed small quarrel on his western border; and a mercantile hemorrhaging of general sanctions and rock-bottom oil prices, a some-more resigned business-as-usual atmosphere is substantially not surprising.


Yet, his inventiveness in personification general foil was still transparent with his courtship of fiscally careless Greece — a cheating that during a really slightest fractures a façade of European Union solidarity.


“If a EU wants Greece to compensate a debts it should be meddlesome in flourishing a Greek economy….helping it compensate a debts,” he said, referring to a $2.7-billion tube understanding announced as partial of his mercantile forum. “The EU should be applauding us….What’s wrong with formulating jobs in Greece?”


Unrepentant on Ukraine notwithstanding a mercantile siege and general outlier standing it has bestowed, Putin blamed President Petro Poroshenko for not delivering betrothed domestic reforms brokered during Minsk.


He blamed a West for a “coup d’etat” in Kyiv.


He was asked: Was there Russian crime in a World Cup bid?


“If anyone has evidence, let them benefaction it. We won it in a satisfactory quarrel and are going to horde a World Cup,” he said.


Putin’s violence of a nationalistic drum and augmenting control of a media has kept his capitulation rating in a stratosphere of nearby 80 per cent, notwithstanding flourishing mercantile hardship for a normal Russian.


The control was clear when officials summarily pulled a block on a live feed of his assembly with a news group heads after a initial question, an worried one from Agence France-Presse about a seizure of Russian supervision resources in France and Belgium in a brawl over a gone oil hulk Yukos.


The assembly was carried live on one of Russia’s 24 Hour news channels and it took several mins for staff to reinstate a vacant screen.


Putin aides told an dissapoint Russian and general press corps that “some of a participants wanted it to be an off-the-record meeting.”


When a absurd idea of western news bosses similar to a closed-door assembly was challenged by general reporters, Putin’s handlers only shrugged.


By 1:15 a.m., a news agencies — still fervent to keep a review going — incited to his personal life.


He spoke about carrying a full attribute with his daughters and “good family with my ex-wife and skeleton for my future. I’m OK.”


The questions were going to keep coming, though looking during a time Putin asked: “Are we mad?”




An interview with Vladimir Putin: An exercise in control

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