Interfax: Putin: impression of “manual control” over Russia is deceiving

MOSCOW. Dec 19 (Interfax) – Russian President Vladimir Putin has disagreed with the opinion that Russia is controlled in “manual regime” by the chief of state.

“You are mistaken that the chief of state is dealing with the bulk of governance issues. Questions, which catch the public eye one way or another, come up and there is an impression that everything is being done in the manual regime. This is not so,” Putin said at a press conference in Moscow on Thursday.

He cited as an example the active work of the government and said that the work of the prime minister “was the most difficult.”

“I was the prime minister for four years. You cannot imagine the colossal amount of work the Russian government has to do. Even the prime minister is not aware of some work done by the ministries. It is simply impossible,” Putin said.

“The worst job that we have is the job of the prime minister. This is daily hard labor; it’s like standing under a waterfall, [the work] keeps rolling over you and never stops,” the president said.

“Some questions pop up in the public mind as keynote” so they frequently have to be solved on the level of the prime minister or the president and there is an impression that everything is being done manually,” he said.