Russia in 2007 and New Year speech

Here is Russia Today's pick of the most memorable events in Russia in 2007.

Russia's landmark events in 2007

It seems that I have covered all the events there in my column articles, except for the successful bid for 2014 Olympics. Not a bad job! (I mean for Russia Today.)

Here is
Putin's New Year Eve speech
(with English dubbing)

To watch/listen to the top leader's speech right before the New Year on TV has become a yearly ritual in Russia since the late Soviet time (Brezhnev made the first New Year televised address to the nation in 1970) . As far as I know, very few actually pay attention to what the leader is saying in the speech. When I searched for Putin's speech for this year on Youtube I actually incidentally clicked the link to his speech last New Year Eve and didn't find that out until he mentioned "2006": his facial features and his tone are almost the same in these two videos. One can say the same for the content of these speeches. I don't want to be too harsh on the speech-writer(s): it's not an easy job to figure out something totally original and exciting for such speeches.

Of course, there was something unexpected for at least one such speech: Yeltsin's last speech on the 1999-2000 New Year Eve. He not only surprised all by announcing his early resignation, but also unexpectedly (with some rare candidness for politicians) made an apology for the mistakes he made during his administration of the country.

"I want to beg forgiveness for your dreams that never came true. And also I would like to beg forgiveness not to have justified your hopes." (Source: BBC)

A touching moment. Unfortunately, I haven't located online a video of that speech yet.

Anyway, ritual is ritual.

Happy New Year!