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No more streets in my name, pleads Putin
ZASLAVL, Belarus (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wishes officials would stop naming streets after him and erecting statues of him, his spokesman said on Monday.
Putin, who was president for two terms until he stepped down in May, is immensely popular in Russia but his critics accuse officials of trying to create a Soviet-style cult of personality around him.
Authorities in the Chechnya region, now largely calm after Putin sent in troops to crush a separatist rebellion in 1999, on Sunday named a street in its capital after Putin. Chechnya's President Ramzan Kadyrov professes fierce loyalty to Putin.
"(Putin) has said that he does not have the right or the opportunity to put pressure on anyone, but he himself would prefer it if this did not happen," Putin's chief spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a visit to ex-Soviet Belarus.
"That goes not just for re-naming streets in his honor, but also various statues that have been there for several years, his photographs on school textbooks and so forth. On the whole, he does not support this."
