Eyeing election, Russia's Putin stages
visit to voter's rundown home
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[June 28, 2017]
By Gleb Stolyarov
IZHEVSK, Russia (Reuters) - In a
stage-managed gesture of benevolence a year ahead of a presidential
election, Russia's Vladimir Putin flew 1,200 km (750 miles) to call in
on a woman living in squalor and ordered her to be rehoused immediately.
Putin's carefully-choreographed trip to the woman's Urals home, with
state media on hand to cover, is part of a pre-election Kremlin drive to
project the image of a caring leader as poverty rises nationwide and the
economy slows.
Putin is expected to seek another term next March and, though he is all
but certain to be re-elected by a landslide, he has shown he is eager to
address mounting social grievances across his vast nation of 146
million.
Anastasia Votintseva had complained to the Kremlin leader during a
televised question-and-answer session this month that she had to live in
unsanitary conditions in a ramshackle wooden house.
She said she was afraid the ceiling would one day collapse onto her
children. Putin, live on air, promised at the time to personally visit
her and help solve her problem.
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He made good on his promise on Tuesday, dropping in on Votintseva and
her neighbors who live in a rickety, barracks-style two-storey house in
the Urals mountain city of Izhevsk.
His visit was timed to coincide with the woman's 27th birthday.
"I haven't come empty-handed here," the main Russian TV channels showed
Putin telling Votintseva.
"There is also a present, simple but good. This is a trip to Sochi," he
said, to an applause by her neighbors, handing Votintseva a holiday
certificate for her and her children to visit Russia's Black Sea resort.
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Russian Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, Russian President
Vladimir Putin, head of Crimea Sergei Aksyonov and Artek camp's
director Alexei Kasprzhak visit the Artek children's holiday camp
outside the seaside town of Gurzuf, Crimea, June 24, 2017.
Sputnik/Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin via REUTERS
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"You're my best present," she told him, with tears of gratitude.
Votintseva, who shares a tiny apartment with her three children and
a sister, said she had been due to be given new housing only in
2029.
"Re-house them by the end of this year," Putin told the acting
regional governor, Alexander Brechalov, in remarks shown by some
news programs.
In another case that won public's attention, a young woman from the
Arctic region of Murmansk complained to Putin during his live
phone-in that she had developed an advanced case of cancer after
being misdiagnosed in a local hospital.
State-controlled media later gave blanket coverage to a special
operation by Russia's emergencies ministry which sent a flying
hospital to evacuate the woman for treatment to one of Moscow's best
oncological centers.
(Writing by Dmitry Solovyov; Editing by Richard Balmforth)
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