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
The need to offset the budget deficit in 2009 out of the Reserve Fund will make it necessary to amend the Law On the Budget, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a meeting on economic issues yesterday.
Vladimir Putin began his working week with the Big Russian Encyclopedia brought to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence by Yuri Osipov, the President of the RAS.
The United Russia has won elections to the legislatures of all the nine regions held last Sunday. True, it performed less well than in the Duma elections in 2007 when the situation in the country was stable. The most noticeable drop of confidence in “the party of power” was at the municipal level. Experts attribute it to the fact that the crisis has loosened the link in people’s minds between the images of United Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. The opposition has failed to capitalise on the obvious social demand for left-wing ideas.
President Medvedev’s media quotation index outstrips Vladimir Putin’s for the first time.
Medvedev and Putin are latter-day Kutuzovs
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin uses every meeting with his Ministers to remind them that the crisis has stymied our ambitious plans and that now everything has to be planned anew. Yesterday’s meeting devoted to economic matters was no exception.
The forum Strategy-2020 held by the United Russia Party in Moscow yesterday was devoted to the first year of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency. The conversation inevitably drifted toward a discussion of the economic crisis, as the two themes proved to be interconnected. One of the most notable speeches was made by the First Deputy Chief of the President’s Executive Office, who assured those present that the political system was working effectively while the calls for changing it were “extremely risky”.
Medvedev’s first year was long in terms of political events, and also very difficult, what with the war in the Caucasus and the economic crisis. He could have limited his efforts to clearing up the consequences of these events, but he has not. He advanced a large-scale programme for developing democratic institutions (“participatory democracy”), initiated a reform of the courts and a national anti-corruption plan, formed a personnel reserve, and proposed a concept for European security.
When I am asked to give my opinion on the government’s anti-crisis strategy, I tend to say: Which strategy? And, more dramatically, of which government?
I don’t want to say that we don’t have a Government. On the contrary, we have at least three Governments.
The Ministry of Finance thinks the Russian President’s interference in the country’s tax policy is unwarranted. This conclusion can be drawn from the ministry’s draft report to Dmitry Medvedev following his instructions to review the system of taxation for the coal sector.
