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
According to Moscow police reports, 11,000 came to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, where the Patriarch lay in state, on Saturday night and in the wee hours on Sunday, 25,000 on Sunday, 13,000 in the early morning hours on Monday, 22,000 on Monday, and another 11,000 early Tuesday morning.
On December 10, the Government will hold an extended meeting to discuss 20 billion rouble ($719 million) subsidies to Russian regions for the last time in 2008.
The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily has begun to summarise the developments of 2008, which has proved the most turbulent year of the third millennium.
"The speed of Urals crude's fall is breaking not the psychological barrier, but my mind," a Russian financial-economic official said grimly last week when I asked for his opinion about the price of oil plummeting to $35 per barrel.
Dasha Varfolomeyeva from Buryatia will attend a New Year's party in Moscow, pedophiles will not escape tougher sentences, infant-feeding centres in Nizhny Novgorod will not be closed, and an additional 50 billion roubles will be allocated to support the labour market. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made these pledges during his question-and-answer session, and many are already being fulfilled.
A desire to find various implications in every official action can be partly explained by the Government's quest for ostensive secrecy. However, the possibility of subtle combinations does not necessarily mean that every decision has its own intrigue. Simple explanations cannot be deliberately rejected from the outset.
Conversation with Vladimir Putin, a programme that ousted a previously announced episode of the Bandits of Petersburg serial from the schedule, was coming to an end. Oleg Dobrodeyev heaved a sigh of relief. He had every reason to feel assured, with top-notch presenters Ernest Mackevicius and Maria Sittel-but you can never be sure. Russia is a huge country with many mavericks-what if an off-colour question came through on the air, breaking through selection barriers? All worries aside, however, everything went according to the scenario.
After Vladimir Putin supported them in a live broadcast, Nizhny Novgorod mothers think they should start a political party under the name of MTCB, which stands for "milk torrents between curd banks".
The latest statements by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin show that the Government is turning small business into a strategic sector. The next three or four months will show to what extent the executive branch ranging between small municipal agencies and the federal Government matches current realities, and to what extent officials can adequately react to specific developments, govern the country, and work effectively.
On December 5, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a "meeting on economic issues". Like all government meetings in recent days, it began at 6 p.m. and lasted until late at night. The Prime Minister announced preparations for the meeting on November 17. He instructed the deputy prime ministers to hold "coordination conferences" by December 5 in order "to balance bailout applications and possibilities of financing the economy" (see the Kommersant business daily of November 25). When opening the meeting, Mr Putin emphasized that "in adopting the anti-crisis measures, we are thinking, primarily, about the people, not only about the economy as a whole".
