Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a meeting with journalists following a live nationwide broadcast call-in in Moscow, Russia June 15, 2017. REUTERS/Sergei Karpukhin
IZHEVSK, Russia (Reuters) - In a stage-managed gesture of benevolence a year ahead of a presidential election, Russia's Vladimir Putin flew 1,200 km (750 miles) to call in on a woman living in squalor and ordered her to be rehoused immediately.
Putin's carefully-choreographed trip to the woman's Urals home, with state media on hand to cover, is part of a pre-election Kremlin drive to project the image of a caring leader as poverty rises nationwide and the economy slows.
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