Transcript of Putin's Press Conference

[Moderator] Next question, please. The Philadelphia Inquirer. Trudy, we are happy to welcome you in Moscow.

[Question, in English, followed by a summary of the question in Russian] Mr President, 18 months ago I asked who is Mr Putin in Davos, and no-one would answer. I am still very eager to find out the answer. I wonder if at first you could tell me whether you have a particular political label that you give yourself: social democrat, liberal or some other. What do you want to build for Russian political and economic institutions?

[Putin] Can you, please, repeat the last part of the question?
 

Putin's vision of Russia's future

[Question] What would you hope that Russian political and economic institutions would look like by the time you leave office?

[Putin] With regard to the first part of your question, in which you said you asked about a year ago who Mr Putin was, I would like to ask you not to press me to answer your question. I would not like to give myself any characteristics or, what's more, stick any labels as you have asked. I think that you and your colleagues will do it perfectly well, without my involvement. Talented people like all of you here are very good at it. As for the essence, it seems to me that the person should not be judged by what he says about himself, as we believe here, but by what he does. Let us analyse what has happened in the political, economic and state development spheres.

We have a federative state, a federative system. All processes in the stabilization of Russia's statehood are in the framework of the constitution in force in Russia. I would like to stress that it all is in the framework of the constitution in force in Russia. If you look at the text of the constitution, you will agree that it is one of the most democratic constitutions in force in any civilized country. So it is on that basis that we are developing our statehood, without any changes to its main parameters.

Quite recently, literally yesterday, I chaired the first sitting of the commission on the delimitation of powers between the federal centre, regions and local self-government, and stressed again that the commission should build its work solely in the framework of Russia's fundamental law. Second, in any new, young state - and as our constitution is new and our system completely different to that of the Soviet Union, the modern Russia is a new state despite its thousand-year history - further improvements are clearly required to all institutions. That is, of course, what we are pursuing.

I have already spoken on the subject, with which one can agree or argue, but let me repeat: I believe that, throughout the 1990s, the main constitutional provisions were not adhered to. That they were not adhered to was manifest in the fact that, because of the inactivity of the federal centre, a considerable number of Russia's regions took over some of the federal functions.

To restore justice within the framework of the country's constitution we have put a number of changes in place. We have changed the way the upper chamber of parliament is formed. We have introduced the federal districts and presidential representatives in the federal districts. The basic aim of these is to return federal functions to the federation, which - I repeat - to a significant extent had been lost by the federal centre to the regions. Once this task had been dealt with we moved on to real modernization of the economy and the political sphere. There's probably no point in going into this in too much detail, but let me nevertheless recall what this means. In the political sphere, I mean the law on parties - here too one might dispute whether it was necessary or not. I am convinced it was necessary. For if advanced civilized countries de facto have - and let me emphasize this, de facto have - two-, three- or four-party systems, why then does Russia have 350, or even 5,000 parties? This is bacchanalia, not democracy. And it just leads to people being unable to get their political bearings, and to people in this country making their choices not among ideologies or programmes but among individuals or personalities. And it would have gone on like that for ever in Russia had we not moved to putting things on to a new political foundation.

So much for the political sphere. In economics we have been getting on consistently with debureaucratizing the economy. I have to say that it has happened - unfortunately, but this is a fact, there's nothing awful about it but nevertheless - that the economics minister was called directly to parliament, where he was presenting several documents dealing in particular with debureaucratizing the economy, with liberalizing the economy, limiting state intervention in the economy - unwarranted intervention, as I have already mentioned.

The number of instances where licensing is applied has been reduced from over 500 to 102, if I am correct. As regards this issue, I even had to telephone the economics minister and back his efforts towards that end because, as you probably guess, a large number of bureaucrats at various levels, including the government, would like to continue issuing commands, writing out papers, issuing permits and so on and so forth.

Well, we are now pursuing the most liberal tax policy. Quite a lot has been done to reduce red tape and crime in the customs sector. We meet in full our obligations to foreign creditors. And we are pursuing a balanced and peaceloving foreign policy. We want to build good-neighbour relations with our neighbour countries and our main partners, both in Asia and in the West. All these are true facts from Russia's political reality of the past year and a half. And you yourself now make a conclusion as to who Mr Putin is.

And, finally, what would I like to see in three years and a half? I would like everything that we have started doing now and everything that we are most actively implementing now to be materialized and to yield perceptible results which every rank and file citizens of the country could feel when looking for money in their own pockets. I would like Russian citizens to feel safe, live better and more prosperous lives and be ever more proud of their country.

[Moderator] The seventh row please.