SAINT PETERSBURG: Russian President Vladimir Putin, once seen in the West as a spymaster with an iron fist, has passed the media test at the G8 summit with flying colours, analysts say.

For three days, a visibly confident Putin held daily press conferences where he used his sharp wit and set out clear policy goals. His Western public relations advisers said they just told him to be “natural”.

“I cannot think of a summit when the host leader every night would show up and do this freewheeling news conference. He clearly enjoyed it,” said John Kirton, director of the G8 research group at Toronto University.

Hundreds of foreign reporters attending the briefings saw a man very different from the image of the “butcher” of Chechnya who in 1999 called to “wipe out the terrorists ... in the shithouse.”

Putin’s charm offensive worked so well it sometimes verged on the absurd.

“You are our hero,” a Chinese journalist gushed to Putin at one press conference, thanking the Russian leader for inviting Chinese President Hu Jintao to the meeting of G8 leaders.

A Western consultant advising the Russian G8 presidency, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP that the massive media exposure at the summit had showed up Putin’s good communication skills.

“Putin is one of your best communicators,” the consultant said he advised Russian summit organizers.

“He’s a very quick-footed communicator. He’s a natural,” he said.

Ahead of the G8 summit, Kremlin officials realised that Russia faced an uphill struggle to move away from the image of a corrupt country mired in a conflict in Chechnya and sliding towards authoritarian rule.

The task was made even more difficult by Putin’s reputation among critics as an enemy of freedom of speech in Russia because of the closure of independent and opposition media under his rule.

“We had to explain to the Kremlin how to work with the international media, explain that it wasn’t about controlling it but about taming it,” the Western adviser said.

The Kremlin hired Ketchum, a top Western public relations firm, to “improve the image” of the country, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told AFP in May.

Some 20 Ketchum communication specialists descended on Moscow from Brussels, London and Washington to help the Putin administration better sell Russia.—AFP