Putin swung into action in July as more than 600 brush and forest fires swept across western Russia. He was front-and-center on evening TV news broadcasts, whipping officialdom into shape, reassuring the population, and holding televised meetings in which he upbraided lax local officials and promised rapid and generous state assistance for the fire victims.
Putin also literally took to the air as copilot of a Be-200 amphibious fire-fighting aircraft (see video here) that scooped water from a lake and dropped it onto two forest fires.
"This is Putin's personal style, he likes to show that he's everywhere, that he can do anything," Alexei Mukhin, director of the independent Center for Political Information in Moscow, told the Monitor at the time. "And all indications show that this works. Russians feel reassured to have such a leader, and they miss Putin as president. You can see it in their eyes."
