Russians submitted more than 300,000 questions for President Vladimir Putin within the first 24 hours of phone lines opening for his annual televised question-and-answer marathon, organizers quoted by AAP agency said.
The organizers’ Web site, www.president-line.ru, said a total of 305,735 queries had been submitted by 10am Moscow time on Sunday, with three days to go before Wednesday’s televised session.
The most popular subjects to date included student funding, the minimum wage, economic reform, relations with Russia’s neighbors and soaring housing costs, the Web site said.
The phone-in will be Putin’s fifth. In previous years, he has answered almost 60 questions in a three-hour program, a format he claims to enjoy, and — in a touch of populism — he usually makes at least one questioner’s wish come true.
Last year, after a pensioner told the president she had to lug water home in buckets, the local government sent in plumbers and budgeted 80 million rubles to fix the problem.
After another phone-in, a town near the Chinese border received a giant Christmas tree after a poignant plea from a child.
Halfway through his second term as president, Putin remains wildly popular in Russia and his dominance of the political scene means there is little political opposition to the Kremlin.
The Levada Centre, a Russian polling firm, says that at least 75 percent of those polled approved of his actions in surveys conducted in each of the last five months.
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 23, 2006
The Kremlin’s campaign to improve Russia’s image on the international stage is to move up a gear with the multimillion-pound placing of upbeat “informational†Russian supplements in national newspapers around the globe, the Independent daily reports.
Moscow says it is keen to correct what it sees as overly negative and outdated stereotypes about Russia, which it contends have long been peddled by the foreign media. The essence of its message is clear: the West and the wider world have nothing to fear from a resurgent Russia which doesn’t intend to use its energy reserves to bully other countries and is a reliable business partner.
The first three countries to be targeted with what some commentators have labelled “propaganda†will be Britain, the United States and China, with upbeat pull-out supplements due to appear in The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, and a Chinese daily on a monthly basis starting later this year.
The project will be extended to cover a further nine countries next year and the supplements will appear indefinitely.
The articles will be prepared by a special unit based in Moscow, attached to the government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
It will not be the first Kremlin-backed project to try to give Russia’s image a makeover. Last year an English-language television channel was launched called Russia Today.
And this year the Kremlin signed a lucrative contract with the American public relations firm Ketchum to make sure Russia puts its best foot forward during its historic chairmanship of the G8 group of leading industrial nations.
In recent weeks, the news from Russia has been dominated by a series of high-profile contract killings and a fractious spy scandal with neighbouring Georgia.
Popularity: 1% [?]
October 19, 2006
