Posted on 07/04/2006 12:12:35 AM PDT by garbageseeker
MOSCOW (AFP) - Forget politics, oligarchs and Chechnya. What Russians really want to ask their leader is when he lost his virginity, when he will legalise marijuana and when a giant fictional octopus sleeping at the bottom of the ocean will awaken.
These are at least some of the most popular questions being put by Russian web surfers to President Vladimir Putin on the Yandex website in preparation for a July 6 interactive Internet question-and-answer session.
Putin will respond via Internet in his first-ever webcast to some of the questions posted through the BBC Online and Yandex sites, where queries can also be voted on, as part of a Kremlin media charm offensive ahead of the G8 Summit in Saint Petersburg on July 15-17.
Ranked most popular on Yandex Monday with 8,080 votes was a question on what possessed Putin to kiss a young boy on the stomach during a walkabout in a Kremlin courtyard last Wednesday
Putin stopped to talk to the boy, who was standing by with tourists. In images shown on Russian state television, Putin crouched down, lifted the boy's shirt and kissed him on the stomach.
The curious incident has unleashed gossip and jokes on Russian websites over the past week.
Among other popular questions for Putin were queries on whether the president had ever tried marijuana and whether he would legalize purchase of cannabis.
One question for the Russian president from a source identified as a 17-year-old female named Nastya asked: "At what age did you start meeting girls and when did you have sex for the first time?".
Russian surfers also asked when conscription service into the Russian army will end, why there is so little affordable housing and what Putin was planning to do about an increase in racist violence in the country.
Queries on increasing controls on a wave of immigration from former Soviet republics and making the Crimean peninsula, a mostly Russian-speaking province of Ukraine, a part of the Russian Federation were also among the top-ranked.
More than 3,000 surfers voted on a question from Viktor, 29, on what Putin thought about the re-awakening of the Cthulhu, a fictional octopus-like creature invented by 20th century horror writer H.P. Lovecraft.
Popular questions posted on the BBC Online website, by contrast, were more concentrated on current events.
They centred on the problem of racism in Russia, corruption, the influence of powerful tycoons in the country's economy, the future of the war-torn province of Chechnya and Russia's role on the international stage.
I'd been worried about Cthulhu myself. Glad finally someone's gonna get to the bottom of that issue.
The guy has the personality of a dead fish. They want to know about his past other than being in the KGB.
Those are questions people would like to ask. I really don't think Russians would not ask them because they would end up in a Siberian gulag.
Putin better not fall into this trap. The coastal city of St. Petersburg could be wiped out if he is tricked into summoning this beast.
Metallica's song off the Ride the Lightening album, "The Call Of Ktulu", is more proof of this. The band didn't want to call him by his real name. They were obviously too scared since they reside in the bay area.
View this at your own risk.
"Lovecraft's sketch of Cthulhu"
Nihuya ne ponyatno ((((...
Huh, you have the chance to see these questions asked if you post them via BBC and get enough votes for them.
These questions would qualify as an insult what is a criminal offense.
Since President Putin is an official the punishment can be:
1. a fine of 5000-10000 roubles,
2. a fine up to the person's monthly income,
3. compulsory(?) labour of 120-180 hours, (A person is made to perform a community job in his/her free time)
4. correctional labour up to 6 months (the government confiscates 5-20% of a convicts' income).
Article 319 of the Russian criminal Code.
But I don't know another propaganda machine ready to collect English questions to Mr. Putin.
What ever happend to the good ole days where the prson was sent to the gulag and never seen again?
Well, Stalin died in 1953. In later times the outcome was rarely fatal.
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