Russian president’s yearly question-and-answer event included comments on the former FBI director and a phone call from Arizona about ‘Russophobia’

Vladimir Putin made a sarcastic offer of asylum to the former FBI director James Comey on Thursday, during an attack on Comey’s claims of Russian interference in the US election.

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“It sounds very strange when the head of the security services writes down a conversation with the commander-in-chief and then leaks it to the media through his friend ... How, in that case, does he differ from [Edward] Snowden?” the Russian president asked, referring to the NSA whistleblower who has been given political asylum in Russia.

“That means he is not the leader of the security services, but a human rights defender. And if he faces pressure, then we are happy to offer him political asylum, too,” said Putin.

Speaking during a marathon phone-in session with the Russian people, Putin said he had not followed Comey’s testimony to the Senate intelligence committee last week but knew some of the details. “The former FBI director said there was Russian interference in the US election process but again gave no evidence,” said Putin.



US intelligence agencies believe Russian hackers attacked the Democratic party’s servers with the aim of helping Donald Trump get elected.



Putin accused the US of interfering in countries across the world by financing NGOs, and said many world leaders had complained about this to him but were scared of saying it publicly for fear of angering Washington.

“As for us, we have our opinion, we say it openly, but it’s not some kind of underground sabotage activity.”



Putin said it was important to find dialogue with the US to help solve global issues such as fighting poverty and radicalism, and said he was “ready for constructive dialogue” with Trump.



Putin is due to meet Trump for the first time on the sidelines of the G20 summit in early July, but Moscow’s hopes of a new start to relations under the new president have been overshadowed by the allegations of Russian interference in the election and potential collusion with elements of the Trump campaign.

The phone-in also included a video address from an American man in Arizona, who said he was a friend of Russia and asked Putin for advice on how to fight the “racist Russophobia” he said had taken hold in the US.



“I don’t think I have the right to give you any advice, but I want to thank you for your position, and we know that we have a lot of friends in the United States,” said Putin.

An annual fixture on Putin’s calendar, the televised question-and-answer session is carefully choreographed, and mainly features Russians asking the president to help with local issues.

The hosts said there had been more than 2m questions submitted in advance of the phone-in, which if true would mean that more than 1% of all Russians had submitted questions, a sign that many see Putin as the only person that can solve their problems.

The program featured Putin rebuking a regional governor for a delay in housing payments, and promising to investigate why a Siberian teacher had such a low salary. He also resolved to sort living conditions for residents who live near a landfill site outside Moscow, and help with access to medicine for a young disabled woman.

The phone-in also went live to a group of singing shamans on Siberia’s Lake Baikal, an oath ceremony for army conscripts in Volgograd, and a maternity ward in the city of Ufa, where a man whose wife had given birth minutes previously spoke live to Putin, cradling the infant in his arms.



He was also asked the weight of the biggest fish he ever caught (20kg) and what era he would visit if he had a time machine (the second world war). He dodged an oblique question about whether he would still be president at the time of the next phone-in. Presidential elections are due in March next year, and Putin is widely expected to stand and win but has not officially announced his candidacy.

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Putin spoke only briefly and obliquely about the opposition protests that swept Moscow and other Russian cities on Monday, organised by the opposition politician and anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny. Asked if he would be willing for dialogue with the opposition, Putin said he would talk to people who really wanted to improve people’s lives, but not those who “use the difficulties we have for their own political PR”. Putin has never referred to Navalny by name in public.

Unusually, a graphic that appeared on the bottom right of the screen during the phone-in featured written questions often differing sharply in tone to those that were asked out loud.

They included: “Goodbye Vladimir Vladimirovich,” “Is it true that Navalny is making a film about you,” and “Putin, do you really think that people believe in this circus with staged questions?”

It was unclear if the questions were allowed on to the air deliberately, or due to a production error.