What the world thinks about the Russian Prime Minister's behaviour
Davos offered further proof that the whole world was intently watching Russia and Vladimir Putin. The reaction to the Prime Minister's behaviour is, more often than not, negative.
One proof of this is the media rating of speakers at the World Economic Forum by Swedish company Media Tenor. In terms of the number of times he was mentioned in the media in January, Putin was the runner-up to Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. In terms of quality he was in first place, as negative comments about Putin (the Prime Minister ranked second in terms of negative comments) outnumbered positive ones by two times.
Vladimir Putin came to Davos with "heavy" baggage: the gas crisis and the murder of lawyer Stanislav Markelov, comments Media Tenor President Roland Schatz. The Prime Minister made no attempt to change his image in Davos, Mr Schatz notes: samplings on Sunday showed no dramatic change.
The absolute winner in terms of the number of negative comments was Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan, who quarreled with Israeli President Shimon Perez and forswore coming to Davos again.
Although many media outlets noted the anti-American thrust of the speeches of both Mr Wen and Mr Putin, the former tried to attract investments to China by meeting with business leaders and projecting an image of a reliable politician; Vladimir Putin on the contrary, was pictured as an intransigent politician, says Mr Schatz. During a widely reported spat with Michael Dell, the latter asked Mr Putin how companies such as Dell could help Russia. "We need no help," Putin retorted. "We are not invalids." Dell is trying to promote business in the BRIC countries, but "Mr Putin made it clear to Mr Dell that he should probably drop the R from BRIC," The Wall Street Journal commented.
Another incident was related yesterday by Frankfurter Allgemeine Sontags Zeitung. The Russian Government, the paper writes, had asked businessmen to meet with Putin on Wednesday evening. Many had changed their schedules to meet him, but Putin did not show up. He was 30 minutes late for the meeting organized on Thursday, keeping businessmen waiting "like schoolchildren". "We should have stood up and left," one participant in the meeting admits. "But nobody dared to. Russia is an important market," the newspaper reports.
The forum's events were planned not by the Russian Government but the organizers of the summit, counters Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov, and the meeting with the International Council of Entrepreneurs was initially planned for Thursday: "It did start a little late because the organizers hadn't managed to let all the participants into the conference room on time. The Government does not follow Media Tenor ratings," he said.
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Media Tenor analyzes data on the coverage of people, topics, and events by 100 leading world media outlets, and keeps record of value judgments, both positive and negative. Among its clients are Harvard, Oxford, the London School of Economics, etc.
Maxim Ivanitsky; Nadezhda Sumkina; Mikhail Trudolyubov