RUSSIA: President Vladimir Putin yesterday dismissed suggestions he was taking Russia back to its Soviet past.
Mr Putin, whose latest plan to add to his already strong powers has raised eyebrows in the West, told a conference of international news agency chiefs that some still suspected Russia was stuck in the Cold War days.
"A decade of reforms has shown us a lot," he said. "Many times we have had the opportunity to realise that only consistent adherence to the principles of democracy can ensure Russia's stable development."
The four-year rule of the former KGB man, who rose to power on the promise of stability after the tumult that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, has been marked by steady economic growth supported by high oil prices.
But Mr Putin's critics say that growth has come at a cost, with an increasingly circumscribed domestic media and a judiciary and parliament that do the Kremlin's bidding. Those concerns grew after Mr Putin announced plans to nominate rather than elect regional governors and hold parliamentary polls solely on a party-list basis, dramatically reducing the chances for independent politicians to win seats. Mr Putin has said the changes were needed to unite the country to better face what he called a war on Russia by international terrorism.
Hundreds have died in the latest wave of attacks by Chechen separatists, including more than 320 children and adults held hostage in a school in the southern Russian town of Beslan.
Mr Putin denied the latest moves were a retreat to the past."Many interpretations are based on a mistaken understanding of modern Russian society." He added: "Some see almost no difference between the Soviet Union and modern Russia."
Mr Putin said new terrorist threats to Russia did not alter its general commitment to democracy, but in many cases required new rules of behaviour for everyone, including the media.
"It is clear that the struggle against terrorism cannot be used as a pretext for restricting free and independent media," he said. "But with the new threat from international terrorism around, the media cannot remain a mere spectator. The media community should itself work out rules which would make it an effective instrument in fighting terror."
Russian media's coverage of events such as the Beslan drama is already restricted by rules self-imposed under Kremlin pressure.
They include a ban on showing operations involving the special forces or broadcasting commentaries which could whip up emotions. As a result, most Russians distrusted reports from Beslan by state-run television channels, according to opinion polls.
But Mr Putin made clear he saw such restrictions as justified. "We cannot forget that terrorists are cynically using media and democracy to multiply the psychological and information effect of hostage-taking and terrorist acts."