INSTANT VIEW: Putin defends Russian crisis plan to lawmakers

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Prime Minister Vladimir Putin defended his government's handling of Russia's economic crisis on Monday, telling lawmakers the country would survive a "very difficult" 2009.

The following are comments from analysts on the speech.

YAROSLAV LISSOVOLIK, CHIEF STRATEGIST, DEUTSCHE BANK

"It is a relatively liberal speech in the sense that there were references made to the need to avoid freezing tariffs and this is certainly a positive sign with regard to the possibility of the state intervening and revising these tariffs downwards. This was certainly one of the concerns in market and these concerns have somewhat moderated now."

"It comes after the G20 meeting which in and of itself provided a boost to global equities."

CHRIS WEAFER, CHIEF STRATEGIST, URALSIB

"It was a speech for popular consumption, an effort by Putin to show the government has control over the crisis. The message was that while we're going to have a tough year it's not going to be disastrous."

"It was in the mold of the G20, a moral-boosting effort to create optimism."

OLGA KRYSHTANOVSKAYA, SOCIOLOGIST, EXPERT ON RUSSIAN ELITE

"This whole event was PR for Putin to show he is a leader, a competent boss who knows what to do in the crisis."

"Putin has great personal charisma and today he came across as a democrat and market reformer who understands global problems."

INDEPENDENT POLITICAL ANALYST DMITRY ORESHKIN:

"There was nothing radical, nothing you could compare with Obama's program."

"It was in pure Soviet style. He started by listing the country's successes, that the standard of living has risen, and then went on to say there were a number of mistakes that need to be corrected."

"He said 'yes, yes we understand the problem,' but he didn't say anything about how they are going to solve it.

(Reporting by Melissa Akin and Conor Humphries)