The meeting with the Nashi ("Ours") movement at the presidential residence in the Black Sea resort of Sochi focused in particular on conscripts and their rights in the wake of a string of hazing attacks in the Russian army.
Putin said the conscripts must know their rights and stand up for themselves.
"I fully support what you just said," he said in reply to a Nashi member's question. "People who have come to serve in the army must know their rights."
The highest-profile of the recent hazing incidents involved private Andrei Sychyov, who had to have both of his legs amputated after allegedly being beaten and tortured over the New Year's Eve holidays in his army unit in the south Urals city of Chelyabinsk.
Putin also said the Army needed to raise its prestige, and called on people to treat it with respect.
"We must realize that there can be no country without an army. No army - no Russia," he said.
Putin also called for Russians to recognize that the country's ethnic variety makes it stronger. A string of apparent race-hate attacks in cities across Russia have pushed xenophobia to the top of the political agenda, and brought stinging criticism from the West.
"We complement each other, and it makes us stronger and more effective," Putin said.
He said Russia's richness of different cultures made it unique, and called for people to respect their differences.
"Despite a shared mentality, every region has its peculiarities, and if you go there, you are bound to respect local culture and traditions," he said, adding that such an approach would help reverse current xenophobic trends.
"All these together will not only help to make the problem less acute, but will enable us to forget that it ever existed," Putin said.
Over a thousand people took to the streets of St. Petersburg in mid-April to protest following the fatal shooting of Lamzer Samba, a fifth-year student from Senegal at St. Petersburg State Telecommunications University. Police found a gun bearing a swastika at the scene. Other killings elsewhere in the country include the slaying of a Peruvian student in the central Russian city of Voronezh last October.
On violence against children, Putin said the government and the public had to keep an eye on how children's rights are observed.
"It is a vital issue, because we do not always remember that a child in any society is a highly dependent person," the president said.
But he said the problem persisted both in Russia and many other countries. A number of adopted Russian children have been at the center of abuse and even murder cases, particularly in the United States.
The most notorious incident came in summer 2005, when U.S. citizen Peggy Sue Hilt allegedly beat her adopted two-and-a-half year-old Russian daughter to death in a fit of rage. Hilt pleaded guilty, and the verdict is due on May 25.
"We can see it now in what happens to children adopted by foreigners," Putin said. "In countries where such cases take the most outrageous forms, they come under active public discussion, and we must not be ashamed of making such incidents public either."
Putin said children's rights should be outlined and observed. But he added that Nashi would be unable to deal with family violence on its own, and urged for joint efforts between the public and the authorities.
