Today saw a historic joint venture into cyberspace by the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin who spent the day answering questions which had been put to him on the internet in a surprising joint project between the BBC and the Russian Government.
Amongst the questions put to Vlad, were the reason why he lifted the t-shirt of a 6 year old boy during a walkabout earlier this week & kissed his stomach. Putin replied ""He seemed very independent and serious... I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. He seemed so nice,".
Other human interest questions included one put by a 17 year old Russian girl who wondered at what age Mr Putin had lost his virginity. & of course some telly adicts had to ask about Korean missiles.
Vlad outlined his worries for Russia and his pride. The project comes amidst a concerted focus by the BBC on russian affairs in the lead up to this year's G8 conference which will be held in St. Petersburgh shortly.
You can read excerpts from the webcast here :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5154578.stm
(You can also watch the whole thing by clicking on the relevant link on that page)
In addition the BBC world service "Hard talk" this week interviewed the Russian foreign minister, and it was a really chummy affair in stark contrast to last week's interview which saw Mary Harney told the Irish wanted European Leftism instead of having more neo-liberal US policies thrust on them.
you can read about that & watch the program by clicking relevant links here :-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/hardtalk/5144692.stm
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The theme of this year's G8 summit will be "energy security" and as such will see Bolivian Gas nationalisation issues, Iran, Russian Gas supply and of course the Rossport 5 discussed by Bush, the japanese bloke who doesn't wear a tie (that's his solution for global warming), Mr Chirac, Blair, Prodi, the Canadian guy, and Angela Merkle the woman who won the chancilorship of Germany by not getting enough votes.
none of you are really advised to go protesting this.But if you want here's the link .-