into. back to the problem was the metaphor don't become so the first russian president to step in for a third term as he's inaugurated during a lavish ceremony. and the only way you could these celebrations. new measures intended to make the government more transparent and interactive. francois hollande wins the french presidency as he promises growth instead of austerity while nicolas sarkozy falls under the weight of france's mounting debt. brian arrest a leading human rights activists just days before his interview with julian assange starts airing on our t.v. you can watch that controversial show here on tuesday.

hello and thanks for joining our team with me karen taraji well a very lavish celebration has taken place at the kremlin that putin has become the first russian president to be sworn in for a third term is now start to stay on for an unprecedented six years as putin took to the oath he appealed for unity and reform to forge a stronger russia and what he called a new stage of national development thousands of guest later join the president at a private banquet here are the details of the inauguration from our very own alexandra chefs who is in the midst of events is it the whole process the whole ceremony it's just less than an hour of first we saw live on the huge blossom screens everywhere in the in the in the george and george hall the very beautiful aerial shots of according to the motorcade traveling from the government building

from the white house to the kremlin so it is something unprecedented and normal too for the way this integration has been televised in russia so far then putting arrived he went in. walked past us in the u. sand georgia last thousand guests. they're greeted with a lot of loud of a shit and certainly the people who were there they were really happy to see no human being reinstated as russia present for the third term now. then he calmly and collectedly where it went into the main hall where the whole integration was to take place took the old very short oath only thirty three words. as i fulfill the duties of the president of the russian federation i swear to protect and guarantee the rights and freedoms of us citizens to observe and protect the constitution of the russian federation to protect the sovereignty independence and territorial integrity of all state of its people faithfully as he was leaving in

fact that sent george's whole he shook hands with most of the crowd who was standing up on the first line loud of ation again people very happy for him then we heard from the open windows of the of the old to reshow it's just meters away from the kremlin which is clear symbol that the presidential term of the recording has kicked off in russia the greatest of russia were there not only from russia in fact some former leaders of world countries were there like for me telling prime minister silvio berlusconi former german chancellor gerhard schroeder we're all there as well the last soviet leader mikhail gorbachev the widow of the first president of russia in the even the likes of football stars the former everton football player. who was there it's interesting that even the leader of the biggest biker back in the moscow the night waltz was there and he called the surgeon a very famous guy and he was the only one not wearing tie and suit like most of the guests he was wearing black leather jacket like all bikers do so differently in

mixed crowd but just twenty minutes after the inauguration finished. the hall where we stood george's hall was empty because all of those guests went to dinner some speculate that this is in a cost about a million dollars it's a speculation maybe but i never had a chance to go there but my insiders from the dinner told me that there were black caviar on the menu fried scallops even. a couple chino made of cocoa milk was there along with expensive champagne wine and definitely was a big party to remember when i was going to the kremlin on my way there in the morning it struck me that this. it is completely deserted only the policemen who were there no traffic no anything just have been certainly unprecedented for integrations in russia but this is not something we should be surprised about i remember the scenes from the united states four years back when obama was inaugurated in washington and as many as sixty five thousand policemen servicemen

military were ensuring the safety in moscow there were only twenty thousand so it's just the times it's less than that in the united states also remember in the united states there were helicopters and even fighter jets hovering about washington d.c. to provide security in fact the security measures during obama's obama's inauguration were so serious that took special service almost a year to prepare themselves for for the process of for the ceremony of integration the same basically the security measures apply to all the g. eight and g. twenty summits across the world just points is the latest g. twenty summit in france more than ten thousand policemen were securing the particular point five thousand cameras installed and twenty million euros invested into the security at this during this event so the measures security measures moscow was certainly unprecedented but on the general scale nothing unusual at all now straight after his inauguration president putin signed into force some of his promise reforms and there's a curry is designed to make the government apparatus more effective and transparent

artie's peter oliver has more. plenty of putin has hit the ground running in his third term as president of the russian federation he's signed strategic orders this will hopefully see the improvement to the services provided by both federal and local governments now one of these is that there will be a maximum waiting time of fifteen minutes for anybody going to a government office something to be put in place following what had been complaints about the length of time and the length of queues that people have to wait in we're also going to see the internet's used in order to make the government more transparent now this was something that was put into place by dimitri made yet of in his time as president and it seems that vladimir putin wants to take that further in terms of the bureaucrats in the government wants to increase their qualifications and also to root out anybody who may not be really doing the job

that they're there to do and remove them from their positions now bureaucrats will also have to reveal all of their income and attempt to stamp out corruption in l. levels of now we're also going to see a system developed that will allow people to give feedback to the police and security services so anybody with any complaints about law enforcement can go to these online form and put forward their grievances now we're also going to see the legal system in russia made more accessible now this is going to be made more accessible both physically and in the online media i'm going to see web cams put into courtrooms so this at the trials can be to be streamed over the internet and best again has been launched into the events of sunday night's riots here in moscow several of the police officers that were injured during that right still

remain in the hospital now the. the police have said that they were under orders not to respond to provocations but they only moved in once they realized that the the projectiles bottles rocks and the like they were being through and towards them were actually also heading towards passes by we saw further protests further demonstrations on monday on the day of the inauguration around three hundred people have been detained in various sites across the city and the opposition leaders have said that they will continue holding these type of demonstrations in plan to do that throughout chews day well to me a putin and nor grated as president for the third time the expectations that will be on him and what people expect to a chimp to achieve over the over the six years of this term as now looked us by my colleague and. he's back for an unprecedented third term after

a break as prime minister and many say russia will need to see putin two point zero any leader who's been in power for five six seven years in a difficult position because people get used to him and taken for granted he has to then reinvent himself putin has made the promise ahead of the polls he proposed vast reforms with a major crackdown on corruption diversifying the economy and raising living standards because this is just putting this next term will be the one that forms his legacy as a politician in russian history and i'm sure it will be a positive one. but the people to be convinced most are the opposition gathered in the largest numbers russia has seen for decades after claims a vast front in december's duma vote and clashed with riot police on the eve of thinking to know if you're a suit. needs to set out for reform and

not a reform on paper but something real something that both the opposition and you know the regular people not just in moscow but off throughout russia can see that this is really putin to point out the most popular politician no doubt has a majority of support across russia and is credited with extraordinary development in the country but putin leaves few people in different at home and abroad it usually comes down to love or hate i don't think that everything that putin has done is defensible or by a by a very wide stretch but there are some people who argue in such transparent bad faith that it's and you know it's impossible not to notice that it's just it's a person it's a personality thing in the west he's seen as harsher than specially on foreign policy which could prove to be a challenge on issues like the reset with the u.s. and pushes for intervention in the middle east. but on the economic front analysts

have already steps to change at least three key issues w.t.r. entry privatization investment climate reform we see. putin changing his. emphasis and direction on particular issues in a way which corresponds with a political shift. that is most evident on the web russians have never been more active in politics logs twitter facebook or something putin will have to embrace if he wants to stay in touch you have to participate otherwise you'd be excluded and you would have the other russia which talks its own language and the president will talk his language leaving the question now that he's back can move forward this time he'll have six years to try to deliver on reforms and change which could make or break putin's presidency and he's now a r.t.

moscow and just a few hours into his role as president vladimir putin wasted no time and putting his skates on but this time he swapped the political arena for the hockey rink where the leader took to the ice he took up the stick to slug it out in a friendly match between his team up so-called amateur players and the legends of the sport here in russia that experience failed to hold back the team as the president first scored it during normal time and then netted the winning any penalty shoot out a final score six five all in a day's work for the leader. socialist francois hollande has won the french presidential runoff making it the latest e.u. leader to be swept aside by a crippling debt crises now the proud the president elect tal's promise to fight against the german led european austerity drive and has already spoken to chancellor angela merkel the first foreign leader all and will visit parties to us

are silly reports from paris. tressa law and it is acceptance speech yesterday did talk a lot about unity which is which has been much of the theme of his entire campaign he said he's the one who's going to bring about solidarity and unity criticizing this divisive presidency but of course the unity he's talking about does hinge on his ability to bring about the promises that he had made particularly the practical promises of jobs and employment and this is a no easy feat given the the economic circumstances of france said again he the first thing he wanted to do is to talk to german chancellor angela merkel to push for this growth or yet that approach and he has a lot of supporters on this approach however even the supporters are skeptical as to how much he can really do given the constraints i mean france is a part of the euro zone there are sixteen other nations who are using this currency there are a lot of rules to be followed and so they're looking at how much maneuver room he really had on it comes to international dealings there's going to be the nato

summit and he had said that he wants to pull out french troops from afghanistan a year earlier than planned he will have to and he's expected to present this blood to president barack obama and the the rest of the nato alliance and also when it comes to issues like syria and iran observers are saying that we may expect a less aggressive press whatever this observation is based on the rhetoric so far so of course we have to see the actions that this new president will be taking now french people at the end of the day said that they voted for change but let's not forget that when nicolas sarkozy was voted in two thousand and seven they also voted for change so it's for us all and does have a lot of work to do ahead of him and prove that he does the service presidency author and journalist barry lando says the new president elect francois hollande is on me back with huge challenges on both france and. if you look at the scene from the bus the last night on your television and you saw the red flags and even the hammer and sickle that people cheering in the place feel you would think it was

that the french revolution all her again but that's not all that all of this is about it's a much more modern kind of guy a much more of a social democrat he's talking about balancing the budget in five years how he's going to deal with france's norma's economic problems is still a mystery to many the back foot not just as far as germany is concerned but as far as the conditions in france to i mean the economy here has been hollowed out over the last few years the. price of the workers place of work in france is among the highest in europe and it's gone up tremendously psychos he is only one live and heads of state who have been voted out of office over the last four years since the crisis really with more of a miracle he had won and stayed in so it's more a vote on the economic situation so he's really only partially responsible for whether or not london is going to be doing it will take care of that crisis is

another question. authorities have arrested the country's most prominent human rights activist and harsh critic of the state's ruling family now they were job was detained just days before his appearance on julian assange show here on our team in the program which does are on tuesday the whistleblower gets an insight from him and a fellow egyptian activist into the uprising in the arab states are just over bennett reports. well there are thora teasers said is that now bill ran job is being suspected of committing a number of crimes punishable by law and he's now being held on charges of inciting and taking part in a legal demonstrations and should be remembered labial raja's position has landed him in a number of made in the target even of the bahraini authorities before because he is a highly prominent activist there and also one of the most vocal outspoken critics of the country's ruling family and that's really what makes this next absolutely enough time to show so significant because this is thought to be. the last

interview before his latest arrest now is considered one of the heroes of the first protests that took place in bahrain last february he's now got over one hundred forty thousand followers on twitter the head of the bahrain youth center for human rights and he's really the driving force behind the mass demonstrations that we're still seeing in the streets of bahrain despite a government ban on on public protests there since it became known that he was appearing on sanjay and that's that's what he elaborates on in this next episode when i said in my twitter account that i'm going to meet julian assange and i'm going to. t.v. program my house was surrounded by almost one hundred policemen and. machine guns and i did realize that i was not at home didn't they just to. be to tell me to come to depopulation prosecutor today at four o'clock where i am here so the very day that he was summoned by the public prosecutor's office in bahrain he actually

chose instead to appear on as angie's talk show and and appear r.t. using the platform as an international platform even to criticize the regime in bahrain and it's for this reason the last stanage things why he's been arrested basically by appearing on this. ranch i would indeed be risking a great deal but even so. he would be willing to pay any consequences that come of it because he says he would be fighting in the name of democracy this is what he had to say it's not the first. but this is the struggle this is the freedom disses democracy that we are fighting for as of course. we have to be a discourse and the course might be very expensive as we have been causing but we're willing to bid for the changes that we're fighting for now one of the other guests this week. is another prominent activist in the in the arab spring his name

is our fact that he was a he was a highly influential figure in the uprising in egypt last year in tahrir square that like right up to has become a target of your thora to use the fact that even the sound is leaking to the very people who are making lethal things happen in these countries and are willing to face the consequences as we've seen with now with his arrest this weekend well that really that's what makes this next episode really one that's not to be missed and you can see here marty is being so now eleven thirty g.m.t. this tuesday. a speech to two leading revolutionaries one from bahrain where the revolution failed was really egypt where the revolution is now in turmoil what makes a revolution and where is the arab spring going to go. there if you're just joining r.t. it's nineteen minutes past the hour and polling stations have now closed in syria

where people have been voting for a new parliament the vote took place amid a shaky cease fire between the opposition and the country's ruling regime let's get the latest from our sara first into masters for us sara so you've been there the entire day did the vote go off without incident. well it all seemed to go off without a hitch here in damascus the polls they pinned seven am they closed ten pm and we saw of months of polling stations that we visited it is quite hard to judge the numbers song you had a steady stream of people the seem to be much less a. twenty four million people roughly the population of syria they felt he million people where eligible to vote today of course amongst those one of the criticisms of this they going ahead is that you've got huge chunks of the population that are currently displaced evil's they've got a large number that are now refugees having been forced to flee the violence so

there really is a sense when you hear of this sort of parallel realities you know up in damascus you see a lot of the very thing going ahead to other cities that you get a to much stronger opposition areas that have seen much fifa fighting and it's really a very different story than some of those places that we visited people were dismissing this fate almost completely but the very thing has gone ahead today and we were talking to a lot of the bates's who were telling up at the polling stations who a car thing that ballots i knew they were really very serious about helping that this would be even if it is just a small step something towards political reform the mikes eventually lead system genuine political change you've got to remember that it's nearly fifteen months of the conflict now and as well as the devastating human calls this is really had a very severe economic impact as well and so a lot of the people we were speaking to that was really at the forefront of their minds things like job creation as we said they had the votes going ahead at the

moment as you've got the un observers on the ground exiting the implementation of the peace plan and so the parliamentary elections in the voting going ahead against this backdrop of continued violence here in the country now it's the first such election in almost half a century in syria how is it being viewed in the country what's the mood on the ground. but it's being billed by the government as a really serious keith that president assad is a coup reforms it comes three months of the you had the constitutional reform that was meant to create the formation of new political parties you know there were all steps being taken here there is definitely movement towards freedom of expression. freedom of the political movements in the variations of the parties the problem is that with this you had the opposition dismissing it they boycotted the vote oh together actually that's really dented the credibility of the vote and called into

question just how democratic the elections were going to be without the participation of different elements in fact some people actually criticizing the opposition groups and making that decision that they really this could have been an opportunity to maybe push for change and so really choosing to distance themselves in light of being a missed opportunity. archies our first reporting from damascus thank you so. well u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton has urged india to buy less from iran delhi could be facing u.s. sanctions if it doesn't make significant cuts to fuel imports as america aims to increase its pressure on iran over its nuclear program for more on this we are joined by a fellow for a geo politics. institute power to call live from new york mr proud to call it the u.s. and other western nations have been rosaries in our pressure on iran's nuclear

program for a long time now but why bring in india into it right now. well for the last five or ten years or so india and indian companies have been increasing their presence in the iranian energy sector so much so that a number of the indian refineries the oil refineries are particular specifically. designed to refine. iran's particular blend of crude oil and so as a result of this in gauging. india as india's become along with china one of the largest investors in iran's energy sector and one of its largest importers of crude oil so if there's going to be any dent to. into iran's energy sector it's going to have to involve countries like india and china and others that invest heavily in it what do you think it will mean for india if the u.s. doesn't fact hit new delhi with these sanctions. well i'm not sure if if new delhi

itself would be directly hit but its energy companies certainly would be sanctioned . but the challenge is that. they. wouldn't be easy all that easy to switch from iran from iranian crude to other other sources in part because as i've mentioned. the refineries in india are particularly geared to refine iranian crude and would take a pretty difficult and expensive retrofitting process to be able to do that but at the same time it's not just a matter of of energy dependence because pakistan has not allowed india to access. afghanistan through its through its borders and across its territory and has been sort of forced to to look a little further abroad so it developed

a very strategic link between the child port in eastern europe on the gulf of oman that connects to western afghanistan and this road not only takes away pakistan's monopoly on afghanistan's maritime trade but it also gives india some very strategically important access to afghanistan and to central asia in general so sanctions would be. a little more complicated then then than just withdrawing from from the energy sector and in addition to that we know that in the past india publicly rejected sanctions on iran but now they're reducing their iranian oil dependency so what is their stance on. india sort of been facing a dilemma because on one hand it depends on iran not only for energy and other trade but also for strategic access to central asia and for other strategic ties so

on one hand it can't entirely dump or drop drop iran also for fear that if it drops iran beijing and china would would pick up the pieces especially on preferential financial terms but at the same time it can't entirely reject. the united states' position because of course india is america's sort of burgeoning strategic ally they have tremendous amounts of trade they share strategic interests elsewhere in the world so i guess for the last five years and continuing into it and it continues india has been trying to sort of balance and juggle the relations between between iran and the united states neal i'm sorry to interrupt but usually i'm trying to convince time and i do want to get this last question in what is the alternative alternative with india's economy and population continuing to grow it has an obvious need for oil but it's not producing oil as a nation so what is the alternative. well as it's been

doing for the last few years it's been looking for a sort of creative means to engage with iran economically that involves creating new corporate entities that bad were outside of the realm of western financial sanctions and even by buying iranian crude with through rupees or with with gold and other goods so it's sort of reverted to a barter system so that's one method of. continuing to engage with iran economically and i'm sorry to interrupt you again but yet that is all the time we have unfortunately live from new york that was a fellow for geopolitics at the persecution thank you neal. perfect i'll be back with a recap of our main story shortly with our team.