According to this Time.com story, Mr. Putin is a bit confused about how the free press works.

George Bush knew Vladimir Putin would be defensive when Bush brought up the pace of democratic reform in Russia in their private meeting at the end of Bush’s four-day, three-city tour of Europe. But when Bush talked about the Kremlin’s crackdown on the media and explained that democracies require a free press, the Russian leader gave a rebuttal that left the President nonplussed. If the press was so free in the U.S., Putin asked, then why had those reporters at CBS lost their jobs? Bush was openmouthed. “Putin thought we’d fired Dan Rather,” says a senior Administration official. “It was like something out of 1984.”

And from MSNBC:

When Bush confronted his Russian counterpart about the freedom of the press in Russia, Putin shot back with an attack of his own: “We didn’t criticize you when you fired those reporters at CBS.”

Others have had a few comments.

Kevin Dayaratna has a brief open letter to Mr. Putin (btw, Kevin, what’s up with that squirrel?)

Young Pundit says:

And pass this message to Putin: Our press is free, but isn’t free to slander.

Lori Byrd at PoliPundit has this to say:

the fact that Putin, who has access to CNN and the NYT and every other American and international media outlet, would believe such a thing says a lot about the state of the international media.

Keith Devens is justifiably disturbed.

How could a world leader like Putin be so clueless about how a country he has to deal with works? And not just any country, but the US? What else is Putin wildly misguided on? Very disturbing.

Matt J. Duffy is astounded.

Crazy. That the president of Russia could be that far off base is almost incomprehendable.

UPDATE: The OxBlog has some thoughts on the more substantial portions of Bush’s time with Putin.

Yet whereas Third World dictators have a long history of insisting that their dictatorship is actually a new form of democracy, Putin has abandoned this pledge and acknowledged that democracy has a universal essence. What matters isn’t whether Putin really believes this. What matters is that he told it to the President of the United States, who will be very angry if Putin goes back on his word.

For the reasons given above, I think Bush did a superb job at Bratislava. Now comes the hard part. For the first time, however, I am confident that Bush really understands what is at stake in Moscow.

UPDATE 2: Hey, cool! Andy at SiberianLight threw a compliment my way. Sort of. He includes me in his list of “bloggers who should know better.” And although he’s trying to say I’ve been duped by Time, or that scheming Rove, or somebody, the fact that I “should know better” feels like a compliment … at least looking at life with the glass half full. (Or, as I often think, maybe the glass is simply bigger than it needs to be). Back to the point, check out Andy’s post, where he’s skeptical about this Time story and thinks Putin may in fact be smart enough to know Bush didn’t fire Rather.