Prime Minister Putin, considered to be the de facto leader anyway, gave a hawkish two-and-a-half hour speech to the Duma – the lower house – in which he warned against complacency in the face of Western interference and laid out ambitious plans to turn the Russian economy into one of the top five in the world by 2021.
In a speech with echoes of one Josef Stalin made when he highlighted the need for the Soviet Union to industrialise in order to prevent the West from “crushing us”, Mr Putin said: “In the modern world, if you are weak, there will always be someone who wants to come and advise you on what direction you must move in, what policies to pursue and the path you should choose for your own country. We must be independent and strong.”
He reminded his audience of the turmoil in the 1990s as a consequence of the pro-Western policies adopted by Boris Yeltsin. “The country needs a stable, calm development, without going to extremes one way or the other, without ill-conceived experiments, confusion over sometimes unjustified liberalism or social demagogy.”
The United Russia party, which he heads, and is basically the old Communist Party with a new name and emblem, says it supports Mr Putin for the post of presiden
