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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / At Last, A Leader Who Understands the Importance of Bloggers!

At Last, A Leader Who Understands the Importance of Bloggers!

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From the NYTimes, “Putin Pours Cold Water on Two Fires and One Critic”:

… Last week, Mr. Putin aggressively countered criticism of his government in a reply to an outraged Russian blogger’s screed about the dismal state of firefighting in one small town that had been forwarded to the prime minister by an independent radio station, Ekho Moskvy.
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As the BBC reported, the station “had challenged Mr. Putin to reply to the blog entry, which it selected as an example of anger among Russians over the state’s inability to control the wildfires.” In a note to Mr. Putin accompanying the complete text of the blogger’s post, the radio station’s editor in chief, Alexei Venediktov, wrote, “Nobody will tell you this to your face, of course, but the Internet is full of criticism and discontent.” He then asked the “Esteemed Vladimir Vladimirovich,” to tell the public, “What would you say to this man?”
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According to Russia Today, Mr. Putin’s response to the blogger, in a hand-written letter dripping with sarcasm, began: “At the end of the workday, breathing in the smoke from the burning fires like all Muscovites are doing, I — with great interest and pleasure — acquainted myself with your evaluation of the situation.”
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Mr. Putin clearly did read the obscenity-littered blog post, since he responded to it point by point. While he told the blogger — who uses the name top-lap on LiveJournal — “Overall, I agree with your criticisms,” and promised to provide the alarm bell the man requested for his village, the premier took issue with the assertion that Soviet governments had dealt better with wildfires. Mr. Putin noted that since the current heat wave was the country’s worst for 140 years, no Communist leader had to face the same kind of crisis.
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He also took time to mock the man’s writing style with praise clearly exaggerated for comic effect:
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Indeed you are an amazingly sincere and straightforward person. You are simply a brick! And, undoubtedly, you are a gifted writer. If you were earning your living in literature, you could live on [the Italian island of] Capri just like Lenin’s favorite writer Maxim Gorky did. But you would not be able to feel safe even there, since in both Europe and in the United States people face the same kind of natural disasters.

I wonder what the Russian translation of “DFH-punching” is?

Reader Interactions

23Comments

  2. 2.

    HeartlandLiberal

    I am having a hard time distinguishing between the White House position on us DFHs as delivered by Robert Gibbs, and Mr. Putin’s response.

    History converges, sometimes.

  7. 7.

    BTD

    If this qualifies as hippie puching —

    “Mr. Putin clearly did read the obscenity-littered blog post, since he responded to it point by point. While he told the blogger — who uses the name top-lap on LiveJournal — “Overall, I agree with your criticisms,” and promised to provide the alarm bell the man requested for his village”

    then more hippie punching please.

    The complainer got his pony. Along with some mockery.

    I do not understand the point of this post.

  8. 8.

    gogol's wife

    @Linda Featheringill:

    “probivaya proklyatyĭ chertov hippi”
    LOL: it took me a minute to figure it out, but that means to punch them with a hole puncher. I like it!

    I’d say probably something like “dat’ yobanym khippi po morde.”

  12. 12.

    daveNYC

    Putin actually read the post, responded to each point made, and even promised to get the town the warning bell requested. Yeah, I’ll take that kind of hippie punching any day of the week.

    You know that in the states, all you would have gotten was a McMegan post making it perfectly clear she hadn’t read past the blog post’s title and she’d probably make a math error too.

  13. 13.

    someguy

    Compare, Contrast. Putin – in a plane dropping water on the fires. Obama – on the scene in Louisiana, directing BP to take action. Bush: “Heck of a job, Brownie!”

  15. 15.

    DBrown

    Looks like Putin ready did care about the issue and took the trouble and time to respond and even agreed with the guy – so he mocks a writer who used foul words – we should be so lucky compared to bushcheney when you were called a traitor.

  16. 16.

    Sheila

    Though I only frequent two political blogs, this being one, I admit that I am very happy that the leader of our country does not pay any attention to them. His time can be far better spent actually addressing the catastrophe that is our country these days. “Just what makes that little old aunt think he can move that rubber tree plant . . .?”

  17. 17.

    JGabriel

    daveNYC:

    You know that in the states, all you would have gotten was a McMegan post making it perfectly clear she hadn’t read past the blog post’s title and she’d probably make a math error too.

    Are you implying that a former KGB propagandist would make a more honest and factually reliable blogger than McMegan?

    How dare you!

    .

  21. 21.

    Comrade Kevin

    @BTD:

    I do not understand the point of this post.

    Oh, it’s just another opportunity to use the phrase “hippie-punching”, or trolling the readership, however you want to look at it.

  22. 22.

    zeke0606

    I moved to Russia in 1999 from America and I will not move back. All but a few of these posters cite propaganda and 25 year old Soviet data.

    This shows me that Americans are getting dumber. Or are willfully stupid.

    I wrote to the American president, State Department and my Congressman in 1995 and I am still waiting for any response. I wrote to Mr Putin when he was president – twice – with a small problem both times and twice I had an answer within a week! I wrote in English and was answered in English.

    How many of your elected officials can use more than one language? And from what I have listened to lately, those elected officials – not to mention the terminal rednecks that blow hot air – destroy the English language! In the eleven years that I have lived in Russia, I have yet to hear such fowl language as I have read on these response forums.

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