Russian President Dmitry Medvedev dismissed on Friday any suggestion there is no democracy in Russia.
"That is not so; Russia is a democracy - young and immature, imperfect and inexperienced, but it is a democracy," he told the Yaroslavl Global Policy Forum.
"I know the shortcomings of this system - perhaps better than anyone else, if only because I have more information," Medvedev said, calling criticism of Russia's political system "unfair and tendentious."
"We are at the very start of our path and it is a path to freedom," he said.
The president said Russian democracy has proven its viability, changing from the "dirty word" it was in the 1990s into a notion that "pays dividends."
Medvedev said poverty was one of the principal threats to democracy, adding that a poor person cannot be free and that attempts to impose democracy on poor countries often leads to chaos or dictatorship.
He said that democratic standards should be internationally recognized.
"Only this makes them effective," he said, stressing that there must be no double standards with everyone using his own "yardstick."
This will enable all countries to follow such standards, unafraid that they could be used to limit their sovereignty or exert pressure on them on behalf of some vested interests.
YAROSLAVL, September 10 (RIA Novosti)
