Izvestia: “Putin takes a ride in Berlusconi’s UAZ”
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday unveiled Russia's first automobile plant in the Far East, to be built by Sollers. He drove the first UAZ all-terrain car that rolled off the conveyor, which he had promised to sell to Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
A generation of Russians living in the Far East drove mostly Japanese and South Korean cars for the past 20 years, with Russian-made cars being an exception to the general rule. The only option was to develop domestic production there, and now the Primorye Territory has its first car assembly plant.
Sollers used a loan from Vnesheconombank to establish production at the Dalzavod ship repair and shipbuilding plant in Vladivostok. The car assembly line so far employs 300 people but plans to increase the number of jobs severalfold by 2012. The company aims at full-cycle production in Vladivostok, including the assembly of South Korean SsangYong SUVs, Japanese Isuzu commercial trucks, Fiat Ducato light commercial vehicles, and UAZ sports utility vehicles.
Vladimir Putin drove one of the latter yesterday. "I like it," he said.
Ten minutes before, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov and Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, who were walking around the plant, looked at the car, which costs some 800,000 roubles.
"I wouldn't buy one," Shuvalov said. Sechin nodded in agreement.
"Why wouldn't they?" journalists asked Vladimir Putin.
"They don't have that kind of money," he responded merrily. "As for me, I like it. It drives smoothly; the director said they already have the first buyer, Silvio Berlusconi. I said we could make a present of it, but they told me he had promised to buy the car."
The journalists asked if Mr. Berlusconi would be given a discount.
"Yes, 10%," Putin said smiling. "No presents; business is business."
They also raised the question of the war memorial that was destroyed in Georgia and plans to rebuild it in Moscow. The prime minister replied that "the Georgian authorities want to minimise any negative political consequences for themselves."
"They have committed yet another crime. This is a clear fact, all the more so as people were killed during the monument's demolition," he said.
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In response to the US planned deployment of ballistic missile defence systems in Europe, Russia will develop offensive weapons, Vladimir Putin said in Vladivostok.
"If we do not develop a missile defence system, the risk arises that our partners will feel entirely secure and protected against our offensive weapons systems. ...(T)hey will feel able to act with impunity, increasing the level of aggression in politics and, incidentally, in the economy," Putin replied.
Russia has 174 mobile Topol and 15 of the latest Topol-M missile systems, which is enough to deliver a pre-emptive or response strike at the enemy. Moving at 5 kilometres a second, these missiles can evade ballistic missile defence systems.
Russia could also start deploying its new silo-launched RS-24 missiles, which carry three independently targetable hypervelocity warheads.
The Russian Navy is pinning its hopes on the Bulava missile, even though it has so far not passed all its tests. But the Defence Ministry says completion is inevitable, and then Russia will have a group of Project 955 Borei class nuclear submarines armed with Bulava missiles. Although not a very powerful missile, the Bulava, like the Topol-M, was designed to evade ballistic missile shields.
When it completes its trials, the Bulava missile could become the "offensive weapons system" that ensures national security, Putin remarked during his visit to the Primorye Territory. (Dmitry Litovkin)
By Anastasia Savinykh
