In past years, Vladimir Putin has hosted an annual televised call-in for Russian citizens to ask him various questions. For the first time, this year’s conference featured no such citizens, and instead took the form of a four-and-a-half-hour press conference. While the general consensus seems to be that the event was overwhelmingly boring, reactions to some of Putin’s particular statements are worthy of mention. Below are some responses to the press conference by analysts, politicians, and journalists, all gathered from Gazeta.ru and Kasparov.ru.

Aleksei Makarkin, Deputy Director of the Center for Political Technology:

The main thing in Putin’s address was the mass media. The questions did not used to be so incisive, and moreover, if the president responded, then it was a definitive response. He no longer observes these rules. Some of his answers contained counterattacks, and sometimes he said he wasn’t informed of the issue.

In regards to the anti-Magnitsky law, he gave the impression that he really wanted to sign it, but at the same time wanted to leave a little leeway to have the possibility of backing off from this law.

Not one of his statements was surprising. The goal of this press conference was to retain his supporters. When he answered a question from Gazeta.ru, he was not so much addressing the publication’s readers, but his own supporters, in order to demonstrate that the president is strong.

Mikhail Vinogradov, Director of the Petersburg Policy Foundation:

There was no clear message here.

The questions were more striking than their answers, just like during Dmitri Medvedev’s television interview. The main issue in the press conference was the rebirth of public political life; the press spoke up, and not just the servile ones like Izvestia. The situation is reminiscent of the end of the ’80s, when the press became the country’s key opposition force.

Boris Nemtsov, Co-Representative of Parnas, Member of the Opposition Coordination Council:

I really liked Putin’s statement about Serdyukov today. It turns out that he isn’t a swindler or a thief, since there hasn’t been a court decision yet. But Magnitsky is a swindler and a thief, and [Hermitage Capital Management head William] Browder is a swindler and a thief, despite the fact that there hasn’t been a court decision.

It’s obvious that the war on corruption is a complete fake; they won’t give up their own… I was also struck by [Putin’s statement] that Magnitsky had passed away, and hadn’t been tortured. Although it’s true that after his death they found marks of torture on his body, and his fingers had been crushed. These lies struck me deeply….

Sergei Obukhov, State Duma Deputy from the Communist Party:

Such boredom! Four and a half hours of banality and repetition. Nothing stuck in my memory, everything was predictable. Putin is maintaining the status quo.

In regards to the anti-Magnitsky bill – that which he organized, he answered. It is not as if the Duma came up with this bill; it was, of course, the presidential administration. All of this is psychotherapy that has nothing to do with real politics.

Ilya Yashin, Co-Representative of Solidarity:

Putin says: “We do not have authoritarianism.” And just as swiftly: “I could easily change the constitution.” This is some sort of comedy club, not a press conference.

Ilya Ponomarev, State Duma Deputy from A Just Russia:

The most striking thing to me was the female journalists who asked questions.

Katya Vinokurova, Diana Khachaturian, and Masha who said “Thanks, Vova!” all showed with the same conversational manner just how much attitudes toward the acting president have changed in this country. Secondly, it is very important that the issue of yesterday’s law [on banning US adoptions of Russian children] came up seven times, and the people who asked those questions deserve a gracious bow. Thanks to that, the chances of the president vetoing this bill have risen considerably.

Yevgeniya Albats, Editor-in-Chief of the New Times:

I was certain that he would act like this during the press conference. He basically said: we’re not going to cave to public opinion. The scariest part is that Putin genuinely thinks that how it is in Russia is how it is everywhere. That is unfortunate. He genuinely does not understand basic things.

Masha Gessen, Author and Journalist, US News & World Report:

The most common thing people say to me after my meeting with Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin: “But no, it’s impossible that he didn’t know about you and your book. He’s a security services guy! They would have had to prepare him!” But did he have to prepare for today? To repeat facts and figures, to rehearse answers to totally predictable questions? Enough overestimating this guy. There are already plenty of people who agree that he’s a miscreant. What people still need to understand is that he’s not a very smart miscreant, standing at the head of a behemoth that is utterly casting off the last vestiges of professionalism and the general ability to function. It is a state apparatus built in the image and likeness of its leader: evil and stupid.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty sums up the primary controversies over the bill:

Russian media sources say the law would allow the FSB to warn citizens that their behavior could create conditions that could lead to a crime — even in cases where there are no legal grounds to hold them criminally responsible. It also provides for fines against citizens who disobey FSB officials or in any way hinder their work.

According to an explanatory note posted on the State Duma’s website, the law is necessary due to a sharp rise in extremist activity. The note cites figures from the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor-General’s Office claiming that extremist crimes rose by 30 percent from 2007 to 2008.

The note also criticized the media for propagating “individualism, violence, and mistrust of the state’s capacity to protect its citizens, effectively drawing young people to extremist activities.”

Ilya Ponomarev, a lawmaker from the Duma faction of A Just Russia, calls this hyperbole, saying that the government’s figures on extremist activity are inflated.

“They often label absolutely normal social activists as extremists,” Ponomarev says. “And when the authorities are faced with a real threat to public safety they are helpless. Neither preemptive warnings nor fines will solve this problem.”

There is no shortage of examples of the Russian authorities using accusations of extremism as an excuse to stifle dissent. Federal officials routinely harass protesters, conduct raids of homes and offices, hinder legal forms of protest, and in some cases will block opposition websites, not to mention the torture accusations from Amnesty International.

Speaking to the newspaper Kommersant, Lev Levinson of the Russian non-governmental Institute for Human Rights said that the bill would shift responsibilities currently held by state prosecutors to the police, a move he said was both unnecessary and dangerous. “This is precisely what the fight against dissent is apparently turning into,” he said. “That today the chekisti (referring to the FSB) don’t have the authority to issue warnings doesn’t mean in the least that there aren’t feasible ways to prevent crime.” Levinson added that while prosecutors act as a sieve to prevent abuses when issuing warnings about extremism, the FSB would not.

All in all, said Levinson, the initiative would “untie the hands of FSB officers,” and abuses by the agency can consequently be expected to grow.

In a statement responding to the Moscow metro bombings, Garry Kasparov’s United Civil Front reminded readers of the steps taken over the past ten years by the Russian government in the name of fighting terrorism and extremism, pointing out that, given the bombings, they have not been ideally effective.

The tragic events that occurred in Moscow on March 29, 2010, could be appropriated by the current government for an even larger infringement of the rights and freedoms of citizens of the Russian Federation. The apartment bombings in Moscow, Buynaksk, and Volgodonsk in the fall of 1999 triggered the beginning of a second military campaign in Chechnya and immediately provided Vladimir Putin with the necessary ratings for victory in the 2000 presidential elections. As a result of the terrorist attacks in the Dubrovka Theater in October 2002 and in Beslan in September 2004, elections for governors and regional leaders in Russia were abolished. And today, after the events of March 29 in Moscow, it is obvious that these measures did not increase the safety of Russia’s citizens in the least.

No matter how much this new bill might look like a continuation down that same path, any opposition to the bill is unlikely to keep it from passing given that United Russia, the pro-Kremlin party lead by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, holds an overwhelming majority in the State Duma,.