Vladimir Putin reassures Russians over state of economy

Vladimir Putin attempted to reassure the Russian people over the state of the economy, their wages and pensions in his annual marathon phone-in on Thursday, a sign that the Kremlin is trying to focus its message inwards after a dramatic year in foreign policy.

In a departure from earlier call-ins, Mr Putin focused most of the first hour on the economy, beginning with a rose-coloured overview of the Russian macroeconomic situation and continuing with a detailed analysis of the ins and outs of Russian dairy production.

While Mr Putin acknowledged that real wages had fallen over the past year and that inflation had remained high, he argued that the recent strengthening of the rouble and Russian stock market were signs that the government was implementing the correct economic policy. He claimed that the worst of the economic crisis had already passed and that the economy would see a full recovery within two years.

"Experts see that we have passed the peak of our problems . . . We have carried out the adjustment of the exchange rate of the national currency, nothing has failed, and everything is working," Mr Putin said. "Inflation has gone up, unemployment has increased a little bit - but not like in the eurozone."

A tradition for 13 years running, Mr Putin's phone-in has always been a carefully orchestrated pageant, with video feeds from villages, factories and homes across Russia's 11 time zones and oscillates from the serious to the mundane. It also gives Kremlinologists a peek into the president's and Kremlin's thinking: while the show does not necessarily reflect what the Russian people are thinking, it at least gives insight into the message Moscow is trying to present.

While Mr Putin made headlines at last year's show with his admission that the so-called little green men in Crimea had indeed been Russian soldiers and bellicose rhetoric directed at the west, this year he devoted the vast majority of the nearly five-hour broadcast to domestic issues, ranging from salaries to medicine to whether Russia should raise the pension age.

During the broadcast, the Kremlin gave more questions than usual to members of Moscow's liberal opposition, two of whom grilled him on the murder of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov metres away from the Kremlin earlier this year.

Mr Putin called the murder "tragic and shameful" but said he did not know who had been the mastermind and said he did not know if Russia's security services would ever find out who had ordered the murder.

As he spoke, security forces raided the Moscow offices of Open Russia, Mikhail Khodorkovsky's pro-democracy foundation. Pictures posted on the internet by Open Russia staff showed masked men with automatic rifles searching the foundation's offices and taking away documents, computers and other devices.

While Mr Putin devoted most of the broadcast to domestic issues, he did address Russia's continued stand-off with the west and the recent violence in east Ukraine. Mr Putin claimed that Russia had done everything in its power to uphold the Minsk agreement and repair relations with the west.

He claimed that Moscow had no desire to expand its borders or exert more influence over the former Soviet states. "I want to stress: we are not aiming to revive the empire. We have no imperial ambitions," Mr Putin said.

Asked by one of the liberal members of the audience whether Russian soldiers were present in east Ukraine, Mr Putin responded in the negative. "There are no Russian troops in Ukraine," he said.

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