Chatting on the Internet, Exercise Buff Putin Weighs In

In a live international Internet interview, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s voice, often distorted or broken up, sounded like something from the era of early radio, not the latest that computer technology has to offer.

But with questions from Murmansk in far northern Russia, San Diego and Canberra, Australia, Putin’s Internet forum Tuesday was unusual for a Kremlin leader who normally only gives news conferences to a few handpicked journalists.

Putin, who largely remains a mystery to the West, slipped in some intriguing personal details. A far cry from his mercurial, often unsteady predecessor, Boris N. Yeltsin, he is a fitness fanatic who rises before dawn for 50 minutes of exercise, then usually takes a 90-minute break later in the day for yet more exercise.

Although analysts dismissed it as PR puff, Putin used the forum to convey an image of a modern, fit, intellectual and computer-literate leader. The president likes to show off his computer skills--even suggesting at last year’s summit of the world’s major industrialized nations that the leaders communicate using e-mail.

Yeltsin never had a computer on his desk, whereas Putin said he checks his e-mail daily but admitted that he makes limited use of the Internet because of “inbred laziness.”

He said he reads to increase his knowledge and is engrossed in a book on the rule of Catherine the Great as well as “Reflections on Russia” by the respected literary academic Dmitri Likhachev, who died in 1999. His musical tastes are “light classical,” Tchaikovsky and “Schubert as transcribed by Liszt--I mean Liszt as transcribed by Schubert.”

It might be his favorite music, but in the end he was mistaken: Liszt transcribed Schubert.

Questioned about the “strictly patriarchal” behavior of Russia’s first couple and the public image of his spouse as reticent, the president replied that “this is our way of behaving--I cannot give her instructions. Our relations are such that if I start doing this, it will backfire. She behaves in the way she considers to be appropriate.”

Only a thin slice of Russia’s population had direct access to the conference--the 2.6 million of the nation’s 145 million people who use the Internet--but the forum got extensive coverage on Russia’s national TV networks.

Some Russian Internet users were scathing in chat room post-mortems.

Chat room participants pounced on Putin’s remark about “inbred laziness”: “Good lord, if the president of this country admits his inbred laziness, what good can you expect him to do?” said one.

“The conference was a fiasco!” said another participant, Yuri. “It should have been structured in such a way so that Mr. Putin would not simply be answering some general questions but would understand the general feelings of all of us--the Internet public. But it just turned into a bland pablum type of thing.”

Another participant chided those who selected the questions, saying: “Shame on you. There were tons of excellent questions and all you could do was [be fawning]. The whole thing looked like a fake.”

The questions were selected and put to Putin from about 16,000 Internet queries by journalists from the BBC and two Russian Web sites, https://www.strana.ru and https://www.gazeta.ru. A BBC report said no topic was out of bounds.

Putin betrayed irritation over questions from Westerners about the war in the separatist republic of Chechnya and about doubts over media freedom in Russia--both put forward by the BBC.

He said a question from Denmark about the cruel methods Russia was using to suppress the Chechen people merely underscored Western misunderstanding of the situation.

In fact, he insisted, Russia is liberating the Chechen people from terrorists.

Another question, which suggested he was suppressing reasonable media criticism, was “bullying” and intolerant, Putin snapped.

Authorities have made moves against Russia’s only nationwide independent television network, NTV, but Putin denied that there are grounds for concern.

Andrei A. Piontkovsky, director of the Independent Institute for Strategic Studies here, said Putin was so addicted to popularity stunts that it seemed the country was in a permanent election campaign.

“Putin does pop politics the way other people do pop culture,” he said. “He has developed a strong liking not for real action but for virtual PR operations that help him recruit new audiences.

“One of Putin’s images, especially in the West, is of a technically advanced person who feels that high technology is his cup of tea. He wanted to remind the world that when he is on the Internet, he is in his natural element. He wants to look modern.”

Putin also repeated threats to drop out of all arms control treaties if the U.S. abandons the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty, seen by Russia as the cornerstone of international arms control.

But he said that Russia will continue to encourage discussions on the planned U.S. missile shield, which could breach the treaty, and that he doesn’t believe it will be harder to deal with President Bush than with former President Clinton.

Mikhail Fishman, head of the politics department of a Russian Web site, https://www.polit.ru, said the central government doesn’t have a commitment to the Internet as a disseminator of information.

“The Kremlin did not want to achieve real, online communication between the people and the president,” he said. “It considered the Internet conference as a slightly unusual, but in general a very standard, PR move by the Kremlin press service. Their purpose was to establish the Kremlin’s presence in the Internet, not to have the president answer questions.”

Alexei V. Kuznetsov of The Times’ Moscow Bureau contributed to this report.