Putin seeks distance from TNK-BP takeover Vladimir Putin said on Thursday he had "mixed feelings" about Rosneft's $55bn takeover of TNK-BP and insisted Russia's government had not initiated the biggest return of oil industry assets to state control for two decades. The Russian president told foreign journalists and academics he had backed the deal largely to resolve a conflict between BP and the Russian oligarchs who owned the other half of the venture. "When BP's management came to me and said [they] would like to work with Rosneft, we could not say no to them," Mr Putin said. "Because otherwise it would have looked like we were boxing them in with TNK, with whom they were in perpetual conflict," Mr Putin said, adding the two partners were "sometimes fighting with their bare hands." "The fact that a company with state participation was increasing its market share at the expense of [a] foreign partner was a minus," he said, insisting this was "not in line with our trend towards constraining the growth of the state sector." Rosneft's $55bn buyout of both halves of TNK-BP will create the world's largest listed oil company, with an output of 4.6m barrels a day. It has brought charges of a new push towards state capitalism by the 60-year-old president. But Mr Putin said the additional purchase of the Russian oligarchs" 50 per cent of the venture came entirely at their initiative. "They expressed their wish also to realise their stake," he said. The president added that he had warned Tony Blair, then UK prime minister, in 2003 when the joint venture was created that a 50/50 structure "would not function." He said BP's nearly 20 per cent stake in Rosneft and two board seats as a result of this week's deal would increase transparency and efficiency at the enlarged national oil champion. Over a two-and-a-half-hour dinner of roast carp and stewed goose with members of the Valdai Discussion Club, Mr Putin staunchly defended his continued leadership of Russia after 13 years as its most powerful decision maker. In a question-and-answer session dominated by the economy - the theme of the Valdai conference this year - Mr Putin made little reference to restiveness over his return to the presidency that has sparked street protests in the past year. But he accused the west of double standards in criticising the two-year imprisonment of two members of the feminist punk band Pussy Riot, insisting the women had broken the law and "violated the morals of the Russian people." The case has been widely seen outside Russia as part of a creeping clampdown designed to suppress opposition, with pop stars including Madonna expressing solidarity. The two women were this week sent to labour camps in the Urals, after they performed a "punk prayer" in Moscow's biggest cathedral earlier this year calling for Mr Putin's removal. An agitated Mr Putin, however, in an answer tinged with social and religious conservatism that is becoming increasingly evident in Russia, attacked those attempting to make the women "prisoners of conscience." "If you in your countries like to destroy the morals of your societies, you can do that, but it doesn't have anything to do with Russia, because we highly cherish what we have," he said. "If a person, irrespective of gender, breaches the law, then the person faces the situation where the government defends human rights - through the courts," Mr Putin added. Whether the sentence is too long or not, I am not entitled to judge, that is up to our judicial authorities. In Soviet times, thousands of priests were massacred, and now the government has a duty, from the point of view of protecting social values and the religious sentiments of our citizens. Mr Putin several times drew comparisons with a US man he said had been imprisoned for making a film that offended Muslims. That appeared to be a reference to the recent jailing of Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, a California man linked to the anti-Islam film Innocence of Muslims that stoked violent protests across the Muslim world in September. "He is in prison through the same motives but nobody is talking about him," he said. Mr Putin deflected a question on whether the much vaunted stability he had brought to Russia risked turning into stagnation, by saying what was important was what had been achieved on the basis of that stability. He said Russia's economy had doubled in size in rouble terms and real wages had done the same. He also insisted his goal in his third presidential term was to "create an efficient, democratic system of governance, and to make people feel that they participate in the governance of the country."