Putin’s got hope?

Vladimir Putin sounded an optimistic note about President-elect Obama during his televised Q&A session today: Usually… when there is a change of power in any country, and even more so in a superpower such as the United States, some changes occur. We very much hope that these changes will be positive. We are now seeing ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

Vladimir Putin sounded an optimistic note about President-elect Obama during his televised Q&A session today:

Vladimir Putin sounded an optimistic note about President-elect Obama during his televised Q&A session today:

Usually… when there is a change of power in any country, and even more so in a superpower such as the United States, some changes occur. We very much hope that these changes will be positive. We are now seeing these positive signals."

Putin said he had no plans to make an early return to the presidency but left open the possibility of returning for the 2012 presidential elections. He also ruled out setting up permanent Russian military installations in Venezuela and Cuba.

It wasn’t all love though. The prime minister threatened to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine and blamed the financial crisis solely on the United States.

Check out the full partial English transcript on Putin’s Web site.

Update: Missed this exchange:

Putin was asked: "Is this true you promised to hang Saakashvili by one part?"

Smiling thinly at the question, posed over a crackling phone line by a man in the Russian city of Penza, Putin, who has in the past used coarse language to hammer home a point, waited for the laughter of his studio audience to subside before replying:

"But why only by one part?"

If you missed it, this is what that the questioner was talking about.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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