Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday outlined an unusually bleak vision of a country mired in poverty, strangled by bureaucracy and facing ominous threats from inside and out.
Going into election season here, he offered, as an answer, an unusually ambitious platform of economic expansion, governmental reforms and military modernization, including the development of new nuclear weapons.
Delivering his third annual address to lawmakers in the Kremlin, Putin portrayed Russia as standing at a crossroads, past the tumultuous transition to capitalism, but still unable to compete against the "highly developed" nations which "we see around us."
His agenda of solutions was definitely framed by the democratic changes of recent years in Russia. The lack of specific detail in his program, however, recalled the speeches of Soviet leaders who vowed to usher in a better tomorrow but failed to deliver.
"We are confronted with serious threats," he said. "Our economic foundation, although it has become noticeably stronger, is still shaky and very weak. The political system is not developed enough. The state apparatus is inefficient and most sectors of the economy are uncompetitive. The size of the population continues to diminish. Poverty is receding very slowly."
Friday's address was widely viewed as the opening of the political campaign leading up to parliamentary elections and Putin's own bid for re-election next March. However, it was as strikingly short on concrete legislative proposals as it was blunt in criticism of a government he has controlled for three and a half years.
"He was very frank, but it was very difficult for him to paint any other picture since these are the truths known to everyone," said Andrei Piontkovsky of the Center for Strategic Studies, a research center here. "The current model of Russian capitalism is just not working."
Piontkovsky said that however laudable and political popular Putin's long-range visions might be, he had offered few proposals to address the problems that face Russia now.
"Unfortunately, there is nothing in between," he said.
Putin called for doubling the gross domestic product -- projected at US$388 billion this year -- but only over a decade. He called for making the ruble a hard currency, convertible overseas for the first time in nearly a century; for breaking the monopolistic control of parts of the economy; and for eliminating the duplicative functions of myriad government agencies that stifle growth. But he did not specify how to achieve these goals.
Putin also reiterated his call for a modern, professional military armed with new weaponry, but he stopped short of embracing proposals to end the unpopular draft. He said instead that the length of conscripts' service would be reduced to one year, from two. The shorter service would not take effect until 2008, beyond the end of a second four-year term of Putin's presidency.
He appeared to be responding to Washington's new nuclear strategy, announced last year, when he said that Russia, too, was considering developing new variants of nuclear weapons.
"I can inform you that at present the work to create new types of Russian weapons, weapons of the new generation, including those regarded by specialists as strategic weapons, is in the practical implementation stage," Putin said.
He did not elaborate, nor did his defense or foreign-policy advisers, though some analysts said he appeared to be referring to Russia's efforts to modernize its nuclear arsenal and to develop low-yield nuclear devices. That remark was greeted with applause.
Putin read from a prepared text, often looking downward. He was stern, even grim at times, his brow knitted.
The address was twice delayed, prompting speculation about differences over what Putin should say and the sensitivity of its timing during the strained relations with the US over the war in Iraq.
As he had during a meeting on Wednesday with Secretary of State Colin Powell, he said that Russia was prepared to cooperate with the US and other nations on global issues, particularly the fight against international terrorism.
But he also made a thinly veiled reference to what many here view as America's expansionist policies when he said, "Strong and well-armed national armies are used not to combat this evil" -- terrorism -- "but to expand certain countries' zones of strategic influence."
Putin also made clear Russia's support of the UN. He acknowledged that the UN was at times unwieldy and said he was open to discuss changes in it, but emphasized that "the international community has no other ... mechanism" for confronting conflicts.
On domestic policy, Putin pointedly lamented a new rise in unemployment and the fact that one in four Russians have incomes below the "living minimum," which is now about US$60 a month.
While he pointed to rising use of the Internet and of mobile phones as nascent signs of a new Russian modernity, he blamed government bureaucracy, political insularity and infighting and a growing concentration of wealth in the "monopoly sector" for threatening to stagnate growth.
"Can Russia seriously counter these threats," he asked, "if our society is divided into small groups, if we are concerned only about our own narrow-minded group interests, if parasitic sentiments grow, not subside, and these sentiments are fueled by bureaucracy's complacent attitude toward the fact that the national wealth is not protected and accumulated but often wasted away?"
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