Russian President Dmitry Medvedev explained Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s recent comments on the need to have a wash after the next elections, at a press conference in Germany on Tuesday.
Putin said on June 30 that after the elections he would “go wash up. Both in the hygienic sense and the political. After all the campaigns that we need to go through, we will need to have a clean-up.”
“In my opinion, he said that after any election campaign hygiene products must be used because a campaign is accompanied by discharges of different information, different technologies, and is sometimes not very clean,” Medvedev said. “That was the point of his words, in my opinion.”
Medvedev also said again that he would soon disclose whether he would run for president in 2012 or not.
Medvedev said in June that his running for presidency simultaneously with Putin in the 2012 Presidential elections would be counterproductive.
In conformity with the Russian Constitution, Putin, who served two presidential terms in 2000-2008, will become eligible to run for a new presidential term in 2012. Neither he nor Medvedev has ruled out entering the race.
Medvedev has dismissed speculation on a growing rivalry between himself and Putin, saying that overcoming the differences of opinion between them has only strengthened their relationship.