NYT: Medvedev Admits Disappointments in His Presidency (and touts his successes)
During a two-hour interview on Russian television on Thursday, President Dmitri A. Medvedev admitted disappointment over some of the goals of his four-year presidency, saying that his anticorruption drive was stymied “because officials are a corporation, and they do not want anyone to meddle in their affairs.”
Mr. Medvedev also defended his record as president, offering the antigovernment protests last winter as evidence that Russia had become freer. He said his political partnership with Vladimir V. Putin, who will take the presidency on May 7, would remain in place “for a long time.”
Mr. Putin’s return has cast the so-called tandem between the two men into doubt. Mr. Medvedev, by far the weaker figure, has been promised the post of prime minister, though in Mr. Putin’s first two terms as president, from 2000 to 2008, his prime ministers were neither influential nor long-serving.
The result was an occasionally unvarnished exchange. Though Mr. Medvedev said censorship was illegal in Russia, the television host Aleksei Pivovarov contradicted him, saying that as an employee of one of Russia’s three major channels, he routinely confronted “limitations that do not allow me to carry out my professional duties fully.” Another reporter asked Mr. Medvedev if he understood that political dissenters in Russia “are ready to go to the most extreme lengths,” and asked if he had “experienced the feeling of despair” amid the political turmoil of recent months.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/world/europe/dmitri-medvedev-admits-disappointments-in-his-presidency.html?_r=1
Interesting that he admits that his anti-corruption drive was ineffective. He at least seems to believe that Russia is freer and censorship is less than when he took office though those assessments will be disputed by many.