Putin says Western sanctions made Russia stronger, jokingly offers Comey asylum during call-in show

Reporting from MOSCOW  —  Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday presented himself as both a czar-like figure able to solve domestic problems and the guardian of the nation’s interests against an increasingly combative West.

In an orchestrated, annual call-in show called “Direct Line With President Putin,” the Kremlin leader fielded questions from the public via video messaging, social media posts and preselected phone calls.

Topics covered during the four-hour program included low salaries, healthcare, poor roads and economic development despite Western sanctions. Participants also asked about Russia’s declining relations with the United States and the conflicts in Ukraine and Syria.

Residents of Balashikha complained about a massive garbage dump near their apartment buildings. The smell is so horrible that kids wear surgical masks when they play outside, residents told a reporter for state television standing by to take their question for Putin.

“A decision has been made to build garbage processing plants, three of them in the Moscow region,” Putin answered, promising to resolve the issue as soon as possible.

Overall, Putin described Russia as a nation working hard to diversify its oil-and-gas-based economy and develop other industries. Western sanctions, he said, were ineffective, and, in fact, inspired the country to “switch on our brains and talents.”

“Russia’s recession is over,” Putin said during opening remarks.

Thursday’s show began with Putin entering the studio like a celebrity host on a television game show, complete with dramatic background music.

He then took prescreened calls and questions from people complaining about low salaries for teachers, postal workers and doctors. As in previous years, the show was dominated by callers from cities and rural outposts complaining about the poor condition of houses hit by floods, terrible roads — potholed, unpaved and in some cases, nonexistent in Siberia — and a lack of medical specialists outside of Moscow.

International affairs played a small role in the program.

The U.S. Senate on Wednesday approved a new, wide-ranging package of sanctions targeting key sectors of Russia’s economy and individuals associated with allegations that Moscow interfered with the 2016 presidential election.

When asked about comments by former FBI Director James Comey and others that Russia tried to influence the election, Putin reiterated his position that there was no evidence to support the claim.

Putin likened Comey, who shared information about conversations with President Trump with a friend who gave them to the media, to Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor who sought refuge in Russia after leaking documents about U.S. surveillance programs to news outlets in 2013.

“What is the difference between Comey and Snowden?” Putin said. “If Comey were an activist, he could get asylum in Russia, too.”

He then fielded a call from an American from Mesa, Ariz., Jeremy Bowling.

“I’m a big fan. I’m very pro-Russian,” Bowling said. “What advice do you have for me to explain to Americans that Russia is not a foreign enemy?”

Putin blamed “growing Russophobia” on the United States’ “escalating internal political struggle.” Russia and the U.S. have many issues that they must work on together, and Russia “does not consider the U.S. its enemy,” he said.

“There are many people in Russia who highly respect the achievements of the American people and who hope that our relations will come to a normal state, in what we are extremely interested — both us and the U.S.,” he said

The subject of Ukraine, which has seen fighting for three years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea, arose in a question from a caller named Dmitry from Kiev, the capital. The caller asked Putin why Russia abandoned Ukraine.

Putin said Russia does not interfere in other country’s affairs, including Ukrainian domestic affairs. He then launched into a speech that painted the Ukrainian government’s battle against Kremlin-backed separatists in the east as a civil war.

Putin has continually denied that the Russian military is assisting the separatist rebels in Ukraine’s eastern regions.

In a rare personal moment, Putin allowed a question about his family, a subject he typically avoids in public.

Putin responded to a question from one of the show’s moderators about his grandchildren, saying that he was pleased that he now has a second grandson. The oldest is in kindergarten and lives in Moscow. He prefers not to speak of them in public to allow them to grow up as normal children, not “as princes,” he said.

In 2013, Putin surprised Russia by announcing on state television that he was divorcing his wife, Lyudmila.

The popular show, versions of which have been broadcast 15 times since Putin took power in 2000, was aired live on state television channels. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Putin personally reviewed many of the written questions in the days ahead of the live show.

A survey by the Public Opinion Foundation before the broadcast found that 74% of Russians considered the call-in session with Putin important. About 58% said they planned to watch the program, a relatively high number considering the airtime was during most of Russia’s workday.

The show is a huge public relations effort for the Kremlin. Reporters for state television were stationed across the country, from Rostov-on-Don’s new airport to the banks of Lake Baikal, doing live reports. A reporter speaking to a doctor at a maternity ward in the Siberian city of Ufa interrupted his interview to speak to a new father, Artyom, whose son Mikhail had been born just 20 minutes earlier.

Putin, from the Moscow studio, smiled at images of the bundled newborn and then addressed Russia’s demographic problems.

Meanwhile, social media had a field day with the event. Some users took issue with Putin’s positive view of the economy and others poked fun at the spectacle.

Many of the jokes pointed to what seemed to be an unmonitored scroll of messages to the call-in center that popped up at the bottom of the screen.

One asked “When are you going to resign, Vladimir Vladimirovich?” (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is his full name.) Another said “Putin, do you really think people believe in this circus with these staged questions?”

Ayres is a special correspondent.

UPDATES:

12:30 p.m.: This article was updated throughout with Times reporting.

This article was originally published at 5:15 a.m.