Putin Uses Televised Q&A; to Kick Off His Reelection Bid

President Vladimir V. Putin on Thursday turned a nearly three-hour televised question-and-answer session into a kind of folksy tutorial on capitalist economics and the opening salvo of his reelection campaign.

Responding to questions posed via Internet, telephone and video feeds from around the country, Putin touched on topics ranging from his family’s new puppies to the American-led occupation of Iraq and the need for Russia to develop a system of home mortgages.

He confirmed for the first time that he would run for a second four-year term in March, declaring concisely in response to a question: “Yes, I will run.”

That came as no surprise to anyone. The highly popular president is seen as a shoo-in for reelection.

Responding to a question from a soldier who suggested that America faces “a second Vietnam” in Iraq, Putin managed to simultaneously take a dig at the U.S. and portray it as an ally.

“We are not interested in the U.S. getting defeated in their struggle with international terrorism because we are partners with the United States in that struggle,” he said. “As regards Iraq, it is another topic. There were no international terrorists there under [deposed President Saddam] Hussein.”

Throughout history, “great countries, empires, have always suffered from a number of problems” such as “the sense of invulnerability, the feeling of grandeur, of always being in the right,” Putin declared. “This always very much hindered the countries claiming to be empires. I hope very much that this will not happen to our American partners.”

His comments came just hours before he met President Bush’s special envoy on Iraq, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III, to discuss easing Iraq’s debt burden.

Putin told Baker that Russia is willing to start negotiations on the issue within the framework of the Paris Club, an informal group of creditor nations that coordinates debt repayment, the Kremlin press service said. Out of Iraq’s estimated $120 billion in debt, about $8 billion is owed to Russia, according to the Russian news agency Interfax.

The annual call-in show, conducted by Putin for the third time, was highly scripted but strove for the appearance of spontaneity, with even several children allowed to ask questions by telephone.

One 7-year-old girl asked: “Why does one have to listen to adults?”

“I think if the requirements are fair, you should obey them because the grown-ups who surround you wish you nothing but good,” Putin replied.

Putin denied interest in serving as president past 2008, when under the constitution he would be required to step down. He read aloud and then deftly dodged a question apparently sent from the Internet that asked: “Are you really going to quit your job four years from now?”

“To begin with, I have to wait until March 2004, and only then would it be proper to discuss the next election, the election of 2008,” he said. “But I can tell you even now that I am against anyone violating the constitution of our country, however noble his motives may be.”

What Putin’s comment ignored was that parties supporting him won more than enough seats in parliamentary elections this month to change the constitution.

“There is clearly a loophole here that Putin has left for himself,” said Andrei A. Piontkovsky of the Center for Strategic Studies, a Moscow think tank.

Several questions were critical of the government’s performance. But Putin used them to explain why problems are difficult to solve, and to stress that in the long run much of the answer lies with market-oriented reforms.

“It would have looked horrible if the organizers had confined people’s statements to just congratulations to Putin on the coming new year, the successful delivery by Putin’s dog of her puppies, and wishes of good health and happiness,” Piontkovsky said. “There had to be a fly in the ointment, for sure, but it had to be a fake fly.”

A coal miner in Siberia said on a video feed that he was living in an old house where the foundation was broken and the walls cracked, then asked: “Can you explain to me, please, why the state says so much but has failed to solve the problem of dilapidated housing?”

Putin began his reply sympathetically, describing this as a huge problem, then declared: “In my opinion, there is a way out. It is the development of mortgage loans.”

The president went on to note that Russian law bans evicting people from their homes. “Is that right? Of course it’s right,” he declared. But he added that the rule should be modified for people who get bank loans to buy their own homes.

“The bank will not give the credit if you do not mortgage something, that property which you purchased with the loan,” Putin explained. “And this is the honest approach, for indeed it is true that either you pay or you return the property. But these amendments for the mortgage lending have to be introduced in legislation.”

Under communism, people viewed housing as something that was the state’s duty to provide, and many still do not understand or accept capitalist concepts of how home loans work. Putin thus neatly turned a seemingly hostile question into an opportunity to expound on the need for one of the reforms that he hopes to enact.

In this regard, “Putin was just fantastic,” Piontkovsky said. “Answers to questions would miraculously turn into full-fledged lectures on why things are bad now and how that needs to be changed.”

One of Putin’s goals was to demonstrate that he “is looking for free-market solutions to all problems,” Piontkovsky said. “And in fact it is true. Putin is indeed an advocate of the market economy. The problem is that he does not believe in freedom and democracy.”

*

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