Putin’s long goodbye to Russian press

Russian president Vladimir Putin held a four-hour press conference on Thursday to mark his departure as Russian president - though not his departure from power. At times it seemed more like a love-in with Russian journalists, many of whom openly praised him, while foreign correspondents looked on bemused.

One young Russian woman journalist noted that the conference was held on Valentine's Day, and asked whether Putin had received a gift. He said he had been busy doing his morning exercises and preparing for the conference, and had not yet received any presents. The reporter then grinned and said she would like to give him a Valentine's card, and he invited her to pass it down to him through the crowd.

None of her colleagues seemed at all put out by a display of misogyny that would be unthinkable in the West. When another young woman journalist asked him about the declining population of Russia and said that she hoped to have a child, Putin shot back to laughter from her colleagues: "That's good, but what does it have to do with me?"

Asked about the controversy over rigged elections [the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe has routinely found that elections in post-Soviet autocracies, including Russia, have been rigged] Putin ridiculed the monitors' desire to teach Russia how to become democratic. "Let them teach their wives to make borscht," he said.

Amid the banter, Putin made it 100 per cent clear that he would remain in charge when his chosen successor Dimitri Medvedev becomes President and he, Putin, is elected prime minister. He said: "The highest executive power in the country is the government of the Russian Federation headed by the Prime Minister."

And just to be clear what he thinks of western journalists, when asked about reports in foreign newspapers that he had used his office to accumulate a vast personal fortune - up to $40bn held in foreign bank accounts, according to some estimates - he replied that such rumours were "picked from a nose and smeared onto their papers".