President Dmitry Medvedev said he and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have, literary speaking, "the same blood group" and belong to the same formation.
“You know, the educational code, the roots going back to the young
years and the postulates on which one’s life is based are very
important for people. We, in this sense, have absolutely the same roots
and the same blood group,” Medvedev said in an interview with Swiss
mass media, in remarks about Putin’s similar statement at a meeting
with members of the Valdai discussion club last week.
Medvedev said that he and Putin grew up in St.Petersburg – then
Leningrad, received an education at the same department of law and
shared “the same atmosphere in the Soviet period.”
“Although, my colleague Vladimir Putin’s years of studies fell on
the 1970s, which was one situation. I studied starting in the Brezhnev
era and ending up in the Gorbachev times with its special nuances.
Nevertheless, the level of education, the lecturers’ skills, life
values, the capabilities which the university gives you, the wish to
apply them in practice and the circle of contacts were very similar,”
Medvedev said.
“Therefore, picturing us all the time using different colors – one
being presented as ‘a young liberally-minded lawyer’ and the other as
“a spy” – is wrong, because we indeed have the same views on many
things in life,” the president said.
