Russian president loves to tweet

President Dmitriy Medvedev has recently been using the microblogging service Twitter to show himself as an approachable Russian leader with a sense of humour.

On 2 October, a Twitter user called Vladimir Solovykh tweeted to Medvedev's account KremlinRussia (above): "Are you real?" Just under two hours later, he received the response: "I reply: perfectly real."

On 21 October, Yuliya Oleynik, a 17-year-old journalism student at Moscow State University, tweeted: "Dmitriy Anatolyevich!!! It's my birthday today. Wish me all the best! I am Yuliya)))." Medvedev soon replied in kind, also with a triple smiley: "Why, certainly, Yuliya. Happy Birthday! All the best to you)))." Oleynik writes a largely apolitical blog on the popular LiveJournal platform. She does not appear to be a member of any pro-government youth organisations.

A wish for greater engagement with the internet audience may have also been the reason why on 26 October Medvedev started following the Twitter account of Anton Nosik, a popular blogger who is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Russian internet. Nosik is also at times an outspoken critic of the authorities. He's the first non-official Twitter user Medvedev has started following.

Medvedev has also started interacting with politicians and celebrities, such as California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who recently visited Moscow.

And Medvedev seems to be keen to show that he can take a joke: on 25 October he tweeted that he had found a video on Twitter about "how I spent the summer". Two days later he posted a link to the video on YouTube which consists of a nine-minute sketch from a comedy show on the popular entertainment channel STS.

The sketch features a character clearly meant to be Medvedev trying to enjoy a break with his wife at his country cottage, but being continually thwarted by his bodyguards, who either get in his way or try to do everything for him. At one point, the Medvedev character is shown embracing his wife, looking into the sky and saying: "Isn't it nice to be alone and sit and listen to the birds singing, the frogs croaking and the woodpecker tapping", only to discover that all the noises are being made by bird and animal impressionists from the "Kremlin Acoustic Woodpecker-Cuckoo Platoon", who were hidden behind a fence. The clip also shows him phoning someone called Volodya (Putin), asking him how much he paid for manure and gloating that he got a better price.

The video and a transcript of the sketch were also posted on the website of the popular pro-government tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda, which sought a comment from Medvedev's press secretary, Natalya Timakova. "The president is an active Twitter user, who freely and regularly interacts with visitors to the microblogging service. There is nothing unusual in the fact that he saw this video and posted it. Dmitriy Anatolyevich has a sense of self-irony," Timakova told the paper.

Medvedev's recent behaviour on Twitter suggests that he is increasingly comfortable with tweeting and is using it as a means of self-expression as well as official and semi-official communication.

It may also have the political purpose of underlining the contrast between Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who eschews all forms of social media and is known for his prickly attitude to TV satire. He is generally thought to have had a hand in the demise in 2002 of Kukly, the Russian version of Spitting Image.

Be that as it may, Medvedev's more relaxed and engaged approach appears to be going down well with Twitter users. His account, which he set up during a visit to the US in June, now has over 110,000 followers, having gained 10,000 in the past couple of weeks.

It only managed second place, though, in the Microblog of the Year category in September's prestigious ROTOR Russian Internet Awards. The winner was KermlinRussia or PerzidentRoissi, an amusing parody of Medvedev's microblog.

The Perzident can be both witty and barbed:

"We recommend that Russian citizens avoid travelling to Georgia. In Georgia there are sharks, gorillas and big, nasty crocodiles."

"We will battle the fires with the help of administrative barriers, which so far no-one has been able to overcome."

"Vote-rigging day went very well. I congratulate One Russia on its victory!"

If what Timakova says about Medvedev's "sense of self-irony" is true, he can no doubt see the funny side of this, too.

Source: BBC Monitoring research 28 October 2010.