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#4
PUTIN WOULD LIKE TO SEE OLD FRIENDS MORE OFTEN

MOSCOW, JUNE 5 (RIA Novosti's Yelena Glushakova) - As he was addressing an undergraduate audience, President Vladimir Putin was asked whether he had personal friends and whether he had frequent contacts with them. "I've got a good many friends - school and university classmates, for the most part. Their number is not shrinking. We were friends when I was not a President, we're staying friends now, and I hope we'll remain so. We meet regularly, though I'd like it to be more often than now," he replied.

There was another personal query - where his two daughters want to study later on. Both girls are now in a secondary school with German curricula and German for tuition language, but they don't want to go abroad for academic degrees. Meanwhile, each has another 18 months at secondary school ahead, so it is too early now to make plans for higher education.

The President does not think it really matters where to live and where to study. One ought to make a free choice here. Mr. Putin sharply came down on those who disapprove emigrants or people who want to emigrate. Be that as it may, all of the people he knows who have left Russia are eager to come back home, he admitted. "I spent five years abroad, and it had its complications. Anyway, it's a personal choice," remarked the President.

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