Putin's Language Is Becoming the Talk of the Vulgar

[kskiska]

President Vladimir Putin has a reputation for foul-mouthed asides, but Italian journalists sitting in straight-backed chairs in a Kremlin reception room cannot have expected what was coming.

Opposite them, Vladimir Putin, immaculately dressed and statesmanlike, answered a question about one of the country's notorious billionaires. The interpreter's voice petered away into embarrassed silence. "You must always obey the law, not just when they've got you by the balls" is a rough equivalent of what Mr Putin had said.

For a western politician such a salty choice of words, shown on national television, might mean political embarrassment, even censure.

But President Putin, once seen as a faceless KGB officer with a wooden delivery, now regularly sprinkles his public statements with the argot of the street. Moscow liberals are appalled and say he is betraying his lack of pedigree for the highest office in the land.

But many ordinary Russians adore Putin's earthy indiscretions for the grit and defiance of convention that they convey.

(snip)

Last year when a French journalist asked a hostile question at a European Union summit in Brussels, the Russian president said: "Come to Moscow. We can offer you a circumcision. I will recommend a doctor to carry out the operation in such a way nothing else will ever grow there again."

When the translation was released, European Union officials expressed their fury. In Russia it ruffled few feathers.

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