SAKHALINSK, Russia, Rabi Al-Akhir 14, 1432 H/March 19, 2011, SPA -- Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Sunday that Japan was starting to get control of the situation at its stricken nuclear power station, Reuters reported. "Our Japanese colleagues are gradually, not right away and with mistakes... getting the situation under control," Putin told a meeting of nuclear specialists and emergency workers in the Far Eastern city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. Putin, Russia's paramount leader, tried to reassure the 6.5 million people who live in the vast swathes of Russia's Far East that there was no immediate danger from the Japanese nuclear accident, the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. "The work is being done properly, in the right way -- 24 hours a day," Putin said of radiation monitoring efforts by Russian authorities. Russian nuclear officials who had returned from Japan just a few hours previously told Putin there was no danger to the population in Russia. Officials said a visit by Putin, by far Russia's most popular politician, would help reassure local people, some of whom have bought up iodine tablets and devices to measure radiation in recent days. "If the prime minister came it means everything is fine," Viktor Ishayev, President Dmitry Medvedev's envoy to the Far East, told Putin.
