Putin’s most memorable quotes

He compares the opposition to jackals, calls for flushing militants down the toilet, and accuses a radio station of pouring diarrhoea over him.

Vladimir Putin has build an image of a man who rarely minces words. Here are some of his most memorable quotes of the past 12 years.

— “I don’t complain when you pour diarrhoea over me from morning to night.”

To the editor of Moscow Echo radio Alexei Venediktov, 2012

— “Sometimes it seems to me that America does not need allies, it needs vassals… people are tired of the dictates of one country.”

At the annual call-in session, 2011

–“Mr. Kadhafi has invented a new monarchy, like Napoleon… twisted, skewed, abnormal, but that’s how it is. Why should we intervene in this armed conflict? Do we not have enough skewed regimes in the world? Will we intervene in interior conflicts everywhere?”

On Libya’s Moamer Kadhafi regime, 2011

— “She gave a signal to (protesters) they heard this signal and started active work… it is unacceptable when foreign money is pumped into election processes.”

Accusing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of influencing the street protests, 2011

— “You came out without such right? Get whacked on the head!”

On unauthorised street protests, 2010

— “I have worked like a galley slave throughout these eight years, morning till night, and I have given all I could to this work. I am happy with the results.”

Press conference at the end of his second term, 2008

— “Unfortunately there are people in our country that are like jackals in front of the foreign embassies… They count on support of foreign funds and governments, not their own people.”

Speaking to his supporters, 2007

— “The fall of the Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the last century.”

State of the nation address, 2005

— “If you are ready to become the most radical of Islamists and to be circumcised, I invite you to Moscow. I would recommend that he who does the surgery does it so you’ll have nothing growing back afterward.”

To a French reporter questioning Russia’s war in Chechnya, 2002

— “We will wipe out them in the outhouse.”

Before the start of the second Chechen war, 1999