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Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin - Source: Reuters -
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, in a bravura television performance typical of his 10 years in power, said he would "think about" running in the 2012 presidential election for a six-year term.
During his annual question-and-answer session with the Russian people, broadcast live by state media, a confident and relaxed Putin told a questioner asking whether he yearned to leave politics: "Don't hold your breath."
Asked about another run at the presidency, which he held from 2000-2008, Putin said: "I will think about it. There's plenty of time."
Less than two hours later during a visit to Rome, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev - Putin's ally and partner in their "tandem" system of rule - said he too would not rule out running in 2012.
"Prime Minister Putin said he doesn't rule out this possibility and I also say I don't rule it out," Medvedev told a news conference in Rome.
Most Russians believe Putin runs the country and takes all the important decisions, despite insistent public comments by the two leaders that they work together.
Few think Medvedev - Putin's protege and hand-picked successor in the Kremlin since 2008 - will be allowed to run again if Putin wants another term.
In his marathon question session lasting four hours, Putin concentrated mainly on domestic issues. He tried to reassure citizens suffering amid Russia's worst economic crisis in more than a decade that their prosperity would return.
Showing his trademark toughness, mastery of detail and humour, Putin comforted a widow who had lost her husband in a dam accident, reassured pensioners, praised individual company managers by name and admitted that bad taste was blighting the country's billionaire oligarchs.
"The nouveaux riches all of a sudden got rich very quickly but cannot manage their wealth without showing it off all the time. Yes, this is our problem," Putin said.
"In Soviet times, some of our rich showed off their wealth by having gold teeth put in, preferably at the front. The Lamborghinis and other pricey knick-knacks -- they are simply today's gold teeth."
Putin largely avoided foreign policy, though he did briefly touch on Russia's relations with neighbours Belarus and Ukraine, stressing how important both countries were for Moscow.
In comments to reporters afterwards, Putin declined to comment on whether Russia would back another round of sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme and said Moscow had no information that Tehran was building nuclear weapons.
Last week's bombing of an express train between Moscow and St Petersburg featured at the start, when Putin said the attack showed that "the threat of terrorism remains very high".
Putin also vowed to continue Moscow's battle against Islamist insurgents in the North Caucasus "until they are completely extinguished" though he did not foresee another full-scale war like the ones fought in Chechnya in the 1990s.
But the main thrust of his comments was that Russia had successfully overcome the economic crisis and that citizens could expect to see a steady improvement in living standards and job security as a result.
"The peak of the crisis has been overcome...exit from the crisis requires time, strength and no small funds", he said.
National institution
In contrast to Medvedev, who stressed Russia's need to move away from energy and develop a modern knowledge economy, Putin emphasised the value of Russia's traditional heavy industries such as truck-building, carmaking, steel and plane-making.
Foreign investment and privatisation were barely mentioned and Putin slammed jailed oil oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky in some of his harshest comments ever, accusing him and other owners of the now-defunct YUKOS oil giant of organising murders.
Video link-ups connected the special Moscow studio near the Kremlin where Putin took questions to neatly dressed groups of grateful workers in the Kamaz truck plant in Naberezhnye Chelny, a Lada car factory in Togliatti and the turbine room of a giant Siberian hydroelectric dam crippled in an August accident.
Asked by one worker in the town of Pikalyovo - where Putin famously intervened in the summer to save a threatened cement factory - whether he would make another visit, Putin said:
"If the situation demands it, I will come to you and to any other spot in the country. It is my duty."
Presenters in Moscow beamed as they breathlessly told viewers that the number of questions submitted to Putin by phone, internet and text message had exceeded two million and queries were continuing to pour in.
Putin's annual question-and-answer sessions have become something of a national institution, allowing the premier to demonstrate his mastery of detail and command of everyday situations in a carefully choreographed environment.
Questions put to Putin were screened beforehand and workers in the various locations featured were invited to attend in closed buildings with no access for the general public.
Nikita Kuprikov, a 21-year-old aviation student who was invited to attend the Moscow studio, told Reuters the group spent two days in a country hotel preparing for the event.
Towards the end of the four-hour marathon, Putin told viewers he had decided to pick out a question asking his views on Stalin although he knew the topic was controversial.
"It is impossible to make a general judgment," he said of the Soviet leader under whom more than 20 million citizens died.
Putin - who once described the collapse of the Soviet Union as
the greatest geo-political catastrophe of the 20th century -
praised Stalin for successfully industrialising the Soviet Union
and winning World War Two but said the "positives that undoubtedly
existed were achieved at an unacceptable price".
