DUSHANBE, April 15, 2016, Asia-Plus — Russian President Vladimir Putin”s annual phone-in that took place on Thursday reportedly received three million calls.
In his comments on Syria, President Putin said, “The point is not that we left and dropped everything… we withdrew a significant part or our contingent, but after the withdrawal we left the Syrian army in a position where, with the support of the part of the contingent that was left there, it can carry out serious offensive operations. Already after our withdrawal it has taken some important targets.”
“It is necessary to accept – for all to agree and sit down at the negotiating table – to accept the constitution and on the basis of the constitution to hold elections. That is the way to get out of the crisis,” Putin said.
Commenting on Turkey, Putin said, “We have, on the whole, good relations with our neighbors. And here we consider Turkey to be our friend and the Turkish people – a friendly nation, with whom we are definitely going to be building the best possible friendly relations.”
“We have problems with some political leaders whose behavior, actions we consider inappropriate. But we are working on this, as you see quite calmly, without any hitches… and this is the line of our reaction to unfriendly actions towards Russia.”
“A reaction is absolutely necessary, otherwise they will be at your neck and will be chasing you away. Such cases have already happened in our history, a long time ago. We should not allow a return to that – and we will not allow that.”
Answering the question about sanctions, Russian president said, “I do not think our partners will move towards lifting the restrictions on our country in the near future.”
“If they (the West) come to the conclusion that it is in their own interests to take steps to repeal those restrictions, then this will put us in a difficult situation, because in accordance with World Trade Organization rules we will be left unprotected if we keep our counter sanctions in place. We will closely follow this process.”
Asked whether he will seek re-election in 2018, Putin said that it is too early to speak about that. “We should think now not about where and how we will work in the future. We should think about how to justify people”s trust today, how to achieve the goals we set for ourselves, the promises we made.”
Putin made the comments during his annual television phone-in show, when the Russian public are invited to telephone, email and text message questions directly to the Russian president.
This year’s show ran for three hours and forty minutes and attracted more than three million calls from across Russia, according to Russian state media.
