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Governor's Tweet Draws Medevdev's Ire

President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday demonstrated tech-savviness by using Twitter for reprimanding Kirov Governor Nikita Belykh for tweeting during a session of the State Council.

"Nikita Yuryevich Belykh sits there writing on Twitter right from the State Council Session. Obviously he has nothing more important to do," Medvedev said during a Kremlin session, Interfax reported.

Minutes earlier, Belykh, who had been tweeting about a speech by Tomsk Governor Viktor Kress on education policies, noticed that presidential aide Arkady Dvorkovich had pointed out his tweeting to Medvedev.

"Well, @advorkovich snitched about my reporting to the president. That's the downside of an information society," he tweeted, using the common Twitter @-sign designating other users on the popular microblogging service.

Medvedev did not tweet during the session but logged onto Twitter from his computer afterward — and published an open reply to @Belykh: "Yes, that's the downside to an information society. But the main point is that it does not distract from work, isn't it?"

"Fully agree — but I was listening carefully, and Kress' speech was circulated last week, and I had read it," Belykh sheepishly replied.

The governor then went on to apologize that he would have to end his Twitter reports from the council. "When the debate about Twitter reached the federal level, the Internet in the hall was choked off," he wrote.

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