PRIME MINISTER Vladimir Putin has said he is open to “dialogue” with Russia’s growing opposition movement, even while claiming not to know who its leaders are or what they stand for.
Mr Putin has repeatedly played down the seriousness of protests against his rule and his United Russia party’s fraud-tainted general election victory.
But his apparent nonchalance is belied by the speed with which his ally, President Dmitry Medvedev, proposed to reform Russian politics and media, after tens of thousands of people rallied in the biggest show of opposition to Mr Putin during his 11 years in power.
State television has also covered the protest movement, breaking a long-standing taboo on reporting strong public criticism of Mr Putin and his ruling clique.
Close supporter and key strategist Vladislav Surkov was also abruptly removed from the Kremlin this week, in apparent response to the need to find new ways to deal with the challenge now facing the premier.
“There should be dialogue, but in what form – I’ll think about that,” Mr Putin said yesterday.
“We were never against dialogue with the opposition . . . But we are against one thing – we are against any expression of extremism. That has to be strictly prevented.”
Earlier this week, Mr Putin suggested that protest leaders simply wanted to “shake things up” in Russia and had no clear plan for how the country should be run.
“They should formulate some kind of shared platform . . . Who do we talk to?” he said yesterday.
The protests in Moscow and other towns and cities throughout Russia have attracted people from across the political spectrum, including members of the far-right and far-left.
In Moscow however, where as many as 120,000 people rallied on Christmas Eve, most demonstrators appeared to be members of a liberal middle class that has re-emerged during a decade of stability fostered by Mr Putin and underpinned by surging oil and gas revenue.
They now want a greater say in politics, more open and critical media, and are sick of the corruption that is endemic in the country and seen as rife in United Russia.
Mr Putin has rejected calls to rerun this month’s general election, but when asked yesterday what he would give Russians as a yuletide gift, he replied: “Honest presidential elections in 2012.”
He intends to win that March ballot and return to the Kremlin, swapping jobs with Mr Medvedev.
One man leaving the Kremlin is Mr Surkov, who is seen as the chief ideologue and architect of the “managed democracy” introduced by Mr Putin to bring order to Russia after the chaotic post-Soviet rule of President Boris Yeltsin.
Mr Surkov has been demoted from his job as deputy Kremlin chief of staff and put in charge of economic modernisation.
He will be replaced by Vyacheslav Volodin, a long-time rival and leading United Russia member.
Mr Surkov adapted a phrase from the French Revolution to explain his unexpected departure: “Stabilisation devours its own children,” he said.
