Putin Indicates He Won’t Stay in Kremlin Past 2008

In a televised town hall meeting that featured his most pointed declaration yet about Russia’s political future, President Vladimir V. Putin on Tuesday rebuffed the idea of holding on to the presidency past 2008 and promised there was “no danger of a return to a monopoly on power.”

But outside the range of the cameras in Putin’s coast-to-coast appearance, a critic of the government who tried to pose a question was shoved to the ground and had two of his teeth knocked out. His wife, a human rights activist, was also injured.

In the end, few of the more than 1 million questions posed to the Russian president by telephone, e-mail, text message and live television linkup made it past the careful screening in what appeared to be the opening salvo of an election campaign in which Putin insisted he would not be a candidate.

For months, the Russian political scene has been consumed with speculation over whether Putin would permit a democratic transition of power at the end of his second term in 2008, when the constitution requires him to step down.

So far, much of the debate has centered on how Putin and those around him in the Kremlin will manage to remain in control -- whether through amending the constitution or by designating an ally to take the reins in a managed election.

Putin’s tenure has been marked by charges of controlled elections, reduced regional autonomy and new controls on political parties and the broadcast media.

Few expect the opposition will be permitted to run unfettered campaigns. Even fewer expect anyone but a close Putin ally, if not Putin himself, to lead Russia after 2008.

“I am asking this question because in past years, you are the only leader under whose guidance the country develops steadily,” 36-year-old Igor Guchkov from the Volga River town of Ulyanovsk asked during the call-in. “After 2008, we would like to continue to have confidence in the future, live in a wonderful and stable society, have a strong and smart president. Don’t you think it would be worthwhile to hold a referendum on a third term in office?”

Putin responded with characteristic dry humor.

“I do not see my goal in sitting in the Kremlin endlessly and having Channel 1, 2 and 3 constantly showing the same face, and if someone chooses a different channel, the FSB [the main successor to the KGB] director would appear on the screen and tell viewers to go back to the first three channels,” he said.

“I see my goal in creating conditions for the country’s development in the long run, for young, skillful and effective managers to come to the country’s leadership,” he added. “So I do not think it would be expedient to make any abrupt changes to legislation, particularly the Constitution of the Russian Federation.

“As for me personally, as the military says, I will find my place in the ranks.”

In skillful parries that ranged for three hours over the landscape of Russia’s social and economic woes, Putin talked of a nation flush with oil wealth and determined to boost salaries and pensions for the poor, upgrade the collapsing healthcare, housing and education systems and repair crumbling infrastructure.

The president with his usual exhaustive command of detail cited improvements and lashed out at local officials, whom he blamed for preventing aid from reaching its intended recipients.

A woman who called from the Stavropol area complaining about no running water hours later learned that plumbers had been dispatched on the president’s orders, armed with a $2.8-million grant, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.

But although many of the questions touched on sensitive issues -- a mother in Chechnya, for example, demanded to know why young Chechen men like her son continued to disappear -- most bore the signs of careful preparation.

Cameras focused on smiling citizens clustered in scenic settings in 12 locations from Sakhalin island to the Black Sea. But a scuffle broke out in the northern town of Vorkuta when 62-year-old human rights activist Yevgenya Khaydarova and her husband, head of a local pensioners advocacy group, tried to join the assembled group through a cordon of police and plainclothes security.

Deputy Mayor Vitaly Neustroyev saw them and insisted they leave, Khaydarova said in a telephone interview. She said the official shouted: “This is our show.... You are not wanted here. Get out.”

The live shot commenced at that moment, and Khaydarova unfurled a banner that said, “It Is Not Putinesque to Remove Privileges From Victims of Political Repressions and Veterans,” a reference to a controversial government decision this year to cancel benefits such as free bus transportation for pensioners and others in exchange for small cash payouts.

Khaydarova said four men wrenched her hands behind her back, tearing the ligaments in her shoulder, then grabbed her husband, 67-year-old Nagitulla Khaydarov, kicking him and knocking out two of his front teeth.

“The whole thing in the square was an orchestrated show, where all the questions and all the lines were rehearsed in advance, many times over,” Khaydarova said.

“This dialogue was really a masterpiece, from the point of view that the guys who are performing the art of the Potemkin village have reached a high degree of perfection,” agreed Liliya Shevtsova, author of a Putin biography.

“There were two messages: One was to convince not only the foreign audience, but the Russian audience, that he’s not going to stay for a third term,” she said. “And the second is to give an impression of a person who really cares about the social dimension.

“He has driven Russia ahead into the election cycle, and his goal is first to neutralize growing social dissent, secondly to create the impression that Russian authorities have a social agenda, and thirdly to create favorable conditions for ... 2008, and even before the election, to neutralize all possible opponents.”

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Times staff writer Sergei L. Loiko contributed to this report.