By Catherine Belton and Charles Clover
As economic crisis begins to take its toll in the shape of employment and rising inflation, Vladimir Putin, the prime minister, sought to reassure Russians by hosting a live three-hour call-in show on TV yesterday.
Fielding questions about everything from Nato to unemployment benefits to Christmas trees, he made few new policy pronouncements but projected the impression that a strong man was at the helm and knew what to do.
Russia's central bank would continue to defend the rouble from "sharp swings" in the exchange rate, he said. He reiterated the line that other politicians have taken that the state might take stakes in Russia's large companies to protect them from bankruptcy.
For people who had lost their jobs and had to pay off mortgages, Mr Putin announced the federal mortgage agency would take over loans from commercial banks and not demand early repayment. He promised large-scale help for the mounting number of unemployed.
Among the 1.3m calls, no concern was too minuscule to be dealt with. The people of the small Siberian town of Pokrovska wanted a sports centre built. "We will absolutely try to react" he told the audience.
A caller from the eastern province of Bashkyria complained that his sister had been deprived of her invalidity benefits. "It must have been a mistake. We'll see what we can do," Mr Putin assured him.
The majority of callers were worried about the economy, rising inflation and unemployment. Russians were either uninterested in speculation that Mr Putin planned to return prematurely to the presidency, or the questions were filtered out.
Call-in shows were a regular feature of Mr Putin's eight years as president, and his decision to continue them after stepping down to become prime minister last May signals that he still has the unrivalled aura as a "father of the nation", according to Masha Lipman, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Institute.
The show, usually held once a year, "emphasises the paternalistic nature of the regime", she said. "It is a style of government in which the most important thing is the rapport between the top decision-taker and the people. Many of those questions were local or even individual. And people have their own legislators. They have federal legislators they voted for, they have their own governors and yet there is this sense that maybe the only way to get a problem solved is to get through to the supreme authority."
Mr Putin was asked to offer his opinion on what kind of Christmas tree should someone buy ("artificial Christmas trees can also be entertaining"), and a young girl named Dasha called from Buryatia to ask for a new dress for the new year. "New year is a time to think not only of what you want but what your grandmother wants as well," said Mr Putin, before inviting the girl's family to Moscow.
From the southern city of Nizhny Novgorod, a mother called to complain that a subsidised baby food clinic had been closed. A half hour after the show, the governor of the province announced the miraculous resolution of the problem.
Questions by e-mail and text scrolled across the bottom of the screen during the three-hour show. "Is it true that we are expecting famine?" read one text. "How will you confront the military power of the United States?" asked another.
In fact, it was only after the show, answering journalists' questions offstage, that Mr Putin made any real news, denying speculation that he might come back to power prematurely, possibly as early as next year, in an orchestrated handover whereby Dmitry Medvedev, the president, would stand down.
Mr Putin quashed this, saying he would only think about running for the presidency in 2012. However, even though he is not the president, said Ms Lipman: "I think by doing this show he consolidates the image of the topmost person in charge."