VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
After returning from Brussels, where the modernisation of the Ukrainian gas transportation system (GTS) will be discussed on March 23, Yulia Tymoshenko will go to Moscow on March 27 for talks with Vladimir Putin. The meeting will be part of the session of the sub-commission on trade and economic cooperation.
Vladimir Putin met his Mongolian counterpart Sanjaagiin Bayar yesterday.
Russia’s entry into the world economic crisis prompted some experts and public personalities to declare that the “tacit contract” between the authorities and society needs to be revised. Those who initiated the discussion proceeded on the assumption that the current contract is both social and economic in character. They claimed that Russian citizens had voluntarily traded their rights and freedoms for higher living standards. However, now that the crisis is upon us, the oil bonanza has ended and incomes are falling, the contract should be declared null and void and citizens should get their rights and freedoms back.
The small opposition in Tatarstan is eagerly discussing the latest rumours circulating in the capital. Allegedly, Sergei Mironov, the speaker of the Federation Council, who is also the leader of the Just Russia party, was recently granted an audience with President Dmitry Medvedev and complained about the results of the elections in Tatarstan on March 1.
It would not be easy to find a person who is happy with the current situation. The country needs change. The question is what should be changed and who will administer it. It is good that we always have supporters of genuine democracy and real capitalism. But it is bad that their practical recipes are often muddled.
During a meeting with miners Prime Minister Putin made a slip of the tongue. Speaking about Ukraine he said that Gazprom did not intend to penalise a neighbour who is “facing default” for failing to take off all the gas contracted for because “one does not kick a partner who is down”. What he said was new both from the point of view of the Russian language and traditional morality. You “do not kick an enemy who is down”. As for “partner” you normally “support a partner”, “don’t leave a partner in need”, “agree” with him or “warn” or at worst “break up” with a partner. The expression “kick a partner who is down” is almost an oxymoron which describes a very peculiar type of business relations.
Elections of the mayors of large cities is one of the few areas of political life that has so far escaped a purge. The mayors are elected by universal secret ballot and you do not have to collect hundreds of thousands of signatures to be registered as a candidate. Instead you can make a money deposit.
A congress of the members of the United Russia cadre reserve took place in Oryol on Saturday. On behalf of the head of the party’s Supreme Council, Boris Gryzlov, the first two hundred letters of recommendation were handed to those who, in the party’s opinion, were high-level professionals and strong state supporters. The party will soon make a short list of the top 300 managers who have a chance to make it to the presidential personnel pool. Kommersant has learned the names of some of them.
Gennady Timchenko, co-owner of the Swiss oil trader Gunvor and Bank Rossiya, has filed a libel suit against The Economist magazine with the High Court in London. Mr Timchenko worked with Vladimir Putin at St Petersburg Mayor’s Office in the early 1990s. He is co-founder of the judo club Yavara-Neva fund of which Vladimir Putin is the honorary president. In November last year The Economist carried an article about rampant corruption in Russia.
Life in the Urals has become harder. People here read their destiny from the pillars of acrid black smoke rising from the chimneys of the Magnitogorsk Metallurgical Plant (MMK)….
