Tariffs are targeting china he ses also coming up on the program this hour its emerged over evidence used to accuse russia of hacking Democratic Party in the run up to the 2016 president ial election the f. B. I. Never saw the final report. Which is based. On britains lucrative arms trucks with saudi arabia are on the line after peace campaigners with a legal challenge over the weapons possible use civilians in yemen naming the seals breach international law. A very warm welcome to our to International One minute past 3 pm here in moscow your company. President putin has been urging tighter control over. The actions of russias Law Enforcement said that there is no need for liberal drug reform a quarter of those in russian prisons right now are serving drug related sentences it follows the controversial case of a russian investigative journalist who had drugs allegedly planted on him and geo old he was later released due to insufficient evidence now theres a new all public una which is currently going as we say 3 hours and counting president putin also spoke on social issues salaries and sanctions a lot of questions on that lets get an update lets cross to a correspondent or at least that wrinkle is following developments for us lot of subjects ranging from seeing their Prison Reform pensions to that controversial issue with eve on goal and off the journalist. Whats been the mian aspects here ilia. Hi again well if youre actually watching the q. And a session the thing that astonish astonishes you the most is the scale the number of formats that are used to submit questions to the russian president the number of regions there are journalists who go live on air to talk to the president with people who ask questions from all corners of the country people. People prerecorded video messages and. Of instagram these kind of videos stories are becoming the most popular way to reach out to the russian leader during this q. And a session and again what you look at is the variety of issues that are bringing brought up we heard about issues in Health Care Issues with wages the level of poverty in general something that is seen in this country as a failure of the socalled waste reform but as you mentioned International Issues were brought up as well at some point during the q. And a the presenters reminded Vladimir Putin that the European Union is about to decide whether to extend the sanctions against moscow and they didnt mention that there were quite a few questions from the russian public on whether it is actually worth to make up a quarrel and this particular case whether that will benefit russia now putin 1st said that it wasnt russia who initiated this battle and also mentioned that the European Union according to the call collations of his government lost much more potential revenue then russia in fact he said that the difference was almost 5 times and then mr putin. Went on to compare the economic pressure that the west was trying to put all of russia to whats happening with china right now the terrorists that are being imposed then. Expanded by the us the famous. The famous or us china trade wars then brought up the chinese tech giant wall way lets take a listen to what exactly was that on that. Ship. We got our act together. We can surrender we can give our pearl we can give away our National Interest but will there be any change we might have some american signals but we really miss me sure. You can get the idea. That since hes been elected he needs to address the throughout the campaign he mentioned that several times it was. Of. The priorities of his Campaign Going to whats happening now. And we will talk to you. To the representatives of those recognized republics but how we resolve this issue in this. Modern history doesnt know a single example of that when conflicts should be resolved. Because if we dialogue between parties. We still have shelling. Their number is only between. The shelling from the block against civilians. During the campaign. And. The blockade is still there and we cannot make it look it is still there while. Mr zelinsky used to say that they need to restore economic ties with those regions but nothing is being done the blockade is being tightened. So in terms of steps forward. These things but we need the political will here. Sir continue talking about the relations with our closest neighbors you already talked about the belarus which is sorry for introducing you heres a question on the utility of people. I dont want to dig deeper into it heres what i want to know there are so many questions on mutilated something. I keep control of that we need to impose restrictions but on the equally tariffs we just make sure that this decision is implied with russian regions. Government exercise control over. Them no need to have the appropriate trolls. Heres another question theres no way back to socialism but you capitalism has not given us anything why didnt you ask the people well people we asked the people in the 99 to. 73 percent wanted to keep the soviet union initially but then no one called that and the Supreme Council of russia spite of the soviet union voted to disband. The soviet union these were representatives of the people they voted to. Get out of the soviet union with one party you from the communist party its the communist party that disarmed the soviet union it was done by the communist party mr garbett shah of the secretary general of the communist party. The news the ultimately you all were born they all served the communist party but. Can we get back. To we want to go to socialism full scale socialism but i dont think that were a different country we need maybe conflict serious conflict to get back do we need a conflict. There are left wing Political Forces there are people who pursue socialist ideas can they control the country can be president why not thats possible any legal political force. Can communicate their ideas to the people and can gain weight and popularity with the people and can be elected would be good for the country but them i dont know. That its one thing to nationalize everything but its another thing that youre nationalized industries would operate efficiently. If youre somebody in the state regulation. Is present here in russia well thats. Worth a separate discussion of the. Many questions about the belarus so the question is when is russia and the belarus are going to united to a single state and theres even the ideal folding a referendum on that. Its not an issue of this we dont have an agenda of building one state we do have a treaty that was signed many years ago of the union state its not a single state its not the same there are many elements. In life. Should the. Union parliament or a single currency. That would bring us together really. Close well russia stalled some of the components restored some of the processes to right now we agree with mr. X. And we need to revise that. Well figure out what needs to be done what needs to be. Exported ugle we have set up an expert group. At the level of the heads of governments and deputy heads of government. Doing that. Here. Terms of Free Movement of goods and services. In terms of social guarantees and a lot mellower has been done but its not enough we can and will do much more. From going back to our Domestic Affairs and one of the goals you of certain your National Projects is the development of. Travel which goes beyond moscow. And so we have some progress with that lets go to go to our correspondent. I. Boast of ties and the 400 and just landed here were listening to the direct line with russias president trenker across the pond is also listening in the. Us the uniqueness of this. A few moments ago were talking about sharma is kept by president putin being invited to share one then we go on to Russia Ukraine relations have never quite know where the questions are going to go over the past 3 hours or so tell us about what really people were mainly speaking about what are all these questions millions of questions we know coming in whats the main things on the minds of people in russia. Well you know and i just want to explain to our viewers that we had to interrupt to Vladimir Putins previous thought about sanctions and the way he compared them to the u. S. Trying to trade wars in the ways that tariffs are being implemented against chinas goods because mr putin started talking about ukraines newly elected president of all of them are selenski and just want to go through some of the things he said about mr selenski he believes that hes a talented man and also a lot of our putin even said he remembers how of all of them are selenski took part in some of the comedy shows that were very popular in russia however mr putin said that whats happening in ukraine right now is not funny at all according to the russian leader in order to solve the conflict in east ukraine there needs to be political will on both sides and what the russian president is also stressing that the fact that the cranium leadership right now is refusing to refusing sorry to hold direct talks with the breakaway republics in east ukraine is unacceptable because according to mr putin the only way to get to peace in that region is to start these negotiations these kind of direct contacts earlier mr putin even received a phone call from kiev you were saying that these questions are mostly from russian citizens is that right but hes also getting messages and phone calls from abroad and the question from kiev was about the ukrainians that are in custody in russia in fact they were arrested after the current straight incident a last year. Mr putin says that these things will be dealt with and some compromise can only be reached when the fate of the russian citizens that are in custody in ukraine will be decided to so mr putin is trying to tie these things together of course as ive said all kinds of social issues domestic issues are being brought up when the salaries of certain russian employees in various regions are rock bottom the people become desperate and they see this kind of phone call to Vladimir Putin as a last result but just judging by judging from my experience from these kind of q. And as in the previous years even if a specific question doesnt go on air that doesnt mean that it wont be dealt with because the team of journalists to the it is a call center there are teams that are working with all these Text Messages all of these complaints then are being forwarded to the relevant Government Agencies and also to the president S Administration and what they are trying to do is solve them and work with all the questions and complaints that they receive now what i have to tell you was a very important part of very important segment of this q. And a when the socalled arctic cold 2 to 8 of the russian criminal code was brought up it is in connection with a very big headline in russian and also International News had the story lately the headline of russian journalist story the arrest of russian journalist eve on goal and off it was a big story in this country the man was accused of possession of drugs and also and intend to. Sell them however then he was released because reportedly that hasnt been proved just yet but he was framed and his backpack home was stashed with drugs well what lot of arm putin said about the. He believes that this kind of case does that mean that the articles of the russian criminal code that hast that have to do with the possession and the selling of drugs have to be somehow liberalized but according to the russian leader what needs to be done is. Somehow to impose tighter control on russian Law Enforcement and i believe we can listen to that part of lattimer putins speech his response to the question that came from the audience about article 2. Do we need to liberalize this area no i dont think thats the right way forward. To be punished for that cant be any liberalization about it but we need to have tighter control over the operations by the Law Enforcement so they dont make any violations would be just people in jail or prison just for from out of to say for the reports and just think it happened with the journalists. Now let me just explain why that issue is very important to the case of journalist eve on gold seems to have come to a happy end but then we understand according to a lot of our pool that there are still thousands of russian citizens that are in custody or under arrest because of this and it doesnt mean that in all cases they were lawful detained so all these cases need to be dealt with and thats why this particular issue is important for this country the q. And a is still under way we are almost 3 and a half hours into it and we are still listening in and ill go back ill get back to talk to you a bit later to discuss Everything Else that we heard and possibly any other important statements you that will be made a lot of. Thanks for breaking down some of the main issues being spoken to by time as you see over the past 3 plus hours are. In central moscow well let lets go through some of the issues that it was speaking about there because im happy to say. What the russian Martin Mccauley joins us live on the program Martin Thanks for sticking bias there as you can imagine theres quite a lot of talking going on today and one of the big. Issues being being sent in to be spoken about the questions from the russian public tara sanctions president putin actually comparator the 2 saying the us is using both as a means of restricting the Economic Growth of its rivals how do you assess that claim. Well sanctions are normally applied by one country on another to try and pressure it to change International Behavior such as american sanctions on russia over crimea and they dont buy us thats one thats political. Economic but it is subject to as Many Political whereas tariffs are a way or protecting your own industry because every country every developed country has tariffs for instance the European Union cars going to america only tax 10 percent whereas american cars coming to you in the world the European Unit actually 5 percent and therefore trump would say thats one fear we would like you to salvage the other 7 out of tariffs so terrorists are in fact a way of protecting your Energy Industry against unfair competition you regard as unfair competition from abroad so if you look at china the objective is different because what hes trying to gauge is the fact concessions from the chinese on the way they conduct their economy about intellectual property law and also that very large trade cooperation it gets eventually from the state which then makes them very very powerful and they are the americans would see that as unfair competition and therefore he wants the chinese to produce a level Playing Field for misquoted you and to conduct business basically the same way as the americans now the chinese of course which said no to that she didnt pay and said no to that and. Also well have the same pledge if you cut from li american body if you will in fact continue so that he can get some concessions from the chinese because he knows that the chinese economy is slowing down because of the World Economy is slowing down so much that he will continue with his with his tariffs and the tariffs. Not a main his economic plan that would cause no political objective is to make sure that. China the us get along yet another player in this part of course is the European Union when it comes to to the topic the russian leader said he believes the e. U. Has suffered more than russia as a result of the sanctions regime do you think that block has the will to keep the penalties to what looks like in place indefinitely. Well you know the president looking at a growth of g. D. P. Of one percent. And thats a very very low level. German industry to a large to. Do you have an export. So therefore the will largely just have to want to cross back to the russian president feeling a very interesting question mark just stand by for a moment. People he has. Been playing these strange diplomatic game called twitter diplomacy and my question is is. Twitter repeatedly that he would like to meet you do you want to meet him and if you do do you believe this meeting words lead to some positive progress to our country and can he is the president somehow in fact speaking of these relations in a good way to improve our relations. Dialogue is always a good thing. Or one you need to dialogue. But if they 50 us shows interest. Said several times we are ready for dialogue in the same extent American Partners are ready we know whats happening in domestic politics in the u. S. Which is even if the president wants to make a step forward. There are a lot of strain that are placed on him by. A lot of checks and. The current president will always now look back at the. President ial race that hes in right now. Some of the american establishment speculate. On the russian and u. S. Relationship trying to. Find something in that would use those muddy waters but inventing fakes that are not. Proven. With healing in that. They could actually use their efforts elsewhere but they continue to pursue this same. Approach but once the. Partners in the us are ready we would respond in kind in a way have quite a busy agenda in international affairs. The new start treaty is about to expire. And there are the treaties which like to discuss. In every area including the economy the us companies dont leave the russian markets and even. Trade. The. Billions. Going to president obama fell just. 12 or 20000000000 number is going to trump the was an increase for sanctions a grave mistake on the part of the us and i hope and sunday they will. Realize that and