RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin used his annual state of the nation address to give Russians an economic pep talk yesterday, while gliding swiftly over the grinding war in Chechnya and the Kremlin's tense relations with the country's billionaire "oligarchs".
"The success of top-priority tasks depends only on us," he told a Kremlin gathering of about 1,000 top political, religious, and military and law-enforcement figures.
"The doubling of gross domestic product within a decade, reducing poverty, improving people's prosperity and restructuring the army." Reeling off the key goals of his second term, he said: "They are a stable democracy and developed civil society. They are the strengthening of Russia's international positions. But the main thing, let me repeat, is substantial growth in the well-being of our citizens."
Amid much hectoring of business to create jobs, pay taxes properly and be more transparent in their dealings, Mr Putin said the economy could actually double in size by 2010 if current growth rates were maintained.
High oil prices have been a boon to the former KGB spy since he took power in 2000, and the economy is expected to expand by at least 6.4 per cent this year.
But little of the growing wealth percolates through the world's largest country, a third of whose 145 million people live below the poverty line.
"This is a huge number," Mr Putin said. "The aim of government, regional and local authorities should be for at least one in three of our citizens - and not one in 10 as at present - to acquire by 2010 an apartment that meets modern requirements."
Mr Putin urged officials to force inflation down to 3 per cent from the current 10 per cent, and to create a tax system capable of luring investors away from Russia's rivals.
While demanding an end to the abuse of tax-reduction schemes and tax evasion, he made no mention of the looming trial of Mr Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man and a Kremlin critic who is accused of huge fraud and tax evasion.
Preliminary hearings begin this week in a case that is widely seen as an attempt to crush dissent and political ambition among powerful tycoons. Mr Putin is hostile to international criticism of the case and of Moscow's dirty war against Chechen rebels.
"Not everyone in the world wants to deal with an independent, strong and confident Russia," he said. "Political, economic and media resources are being used against us . . . I would like to declare that there will be no fundamental review of Russian politics," he insisted, prompting rapturous applause in the Kremlin's Marble Hall, but probable despair among critics who say human rights are under threat here.
He also took a swipe at unnamed non-governmental groups that he accused of concentrating on raising cash abroad and from big business rather than defending the "real interests of the people". "They cannot bite the hand that feeds them," Mr Putin warned.
The 51-year old won a landslide re-election in March, despite failing on a promise to quell separatist guerrillas with whom Moscow has fought two wars in a decade.
His plan to stabilise the region was derailed this month by the assassination of its pro-Kremlin leader.
Nine pro-Moscow soldiers died in skirmishes with rebels yesterday, and Amnesty International said Russian forces "continue to enjoy almost total impunity for serious violations of human rights and international law".
But Mr Putin made no apology: "International terrorists continue to carry out acts of violence and murder against innocent civilians," he said.
"No one, nothing will stop Russia on its path to strengthen democracy and uphold democratic rights and freedoms."