Putin writes column on retaining and firing people

Moscow, May 27 (ANI): Employers wanting to know when and how to retain or fire their employees, should contact Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Turning his hand to writing, Putin's first ever column for a Russian media outlet will be published on Friday, entitled "Why it's hard to fire people".

Written for a niche monthly magazine, Russian Pioneer, it reads as the first admission by Putin of the scale of infighting that raged in the Kremlin during his eight years as president.

"Conflicts within a team, especially within a big team, always arise," writes Mr Putin, in extracts leaked to a Russian news agency.

"This happens every minute, every second - simply because between people there are always clashes of interest."

Putin actually played out a delicate balancing act to stop two groups from descending into all-out war.

The scuffles are rarely aired in public and Putin himself has not made direct reference to them before. But now he seems to confirm the most radical of interpretations.

"I can say honestly that while I was president, if I hadn't interfered in certain situations, in Russia there would long ago ceased to have been a government."

The magazine's editor Andrei Kolesnikov said he had not had to make any corrections as the article was written in excellent Russian, albeit with Putin's famous idiosyncratic expressions in abundance.

For any corporate hotshots looking for tips on how to get rid of underachieving employees in times of economic crisis, the article lays out the "Putin method" of firing, which - on paper at least - sounds surprisingly humane.

"Sometimes from outside it seems like someone should simply be swept aside with a broom, but I can assure you that it's not always like this. You should never bad-mouth someone behind their back, and it's impermissible to fire somebody and toss them aside just because somebody has told you something bad about them," The Telegraph quotes Putin, as saying.

Putin claims that he always gives people the right to fight their corner. (ANI)