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
Last week one of the main Washington "hawks", Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Richard G. Lugar, summarised the main points of the energy confrontation between Russia and the West. His conclusions appear exceptionally flattering to Moscow, namely to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Speaking at Washington's National Defence University, Sen. Lugar stated that NATO, the U.S. and the EU failed to take on Russia's energy strategy in Europe. The Senator noted "Russia's unchecked movement toward becoming an energy supply monopoly" over Europe, calling this factor "one of the most damaging foreign policy developments of the post-Cold War era."
Share prices of the company you invested your money in, fell by 50% within a day. The following day they rallied 50%. Is everything all right? The answer to this question, which most russian economists have been asking since July 2008, is simple but nightmarish.
Prime Minster Vladimir Putin's black Labrador, Connie, is hooked up to satellites, specifically the Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS). The GLONASS signal will completely cover all of Russia by the end of the year, while receiver-navigators will be readily available to anyone. Meanwhile Prime Minster Putin's Labrador, Connie, received a tracking collar containing a satellite-guided positioning receiver from Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov this week.
The work schedules of top leaders can be indicative and... instructive. For someone who carefully follows the sequence of their working visits and meetings it is easy to see what problems the country faces and how it may go about solving them.
NTV first appeared on the air at St Petersburg's Channel Five on October 10, 1993. On January 17, 1994, President Boris Yeltsin decreed that NTV overtake evening time on educational Channel Four. It received the entire channel on November 11, 1996. Many Russians think that the old NTV finished on April 14, 2001, and its heir has only one thing in common with it-the green globe emblem.
The Medvedev-Putin duo is losing the popularity acquired in September, Levada Centre pollsters found during their latest survey. They suggest that the euphoria following the "short victorious war" with Georgia has died down.
The financial crisis, which has struck the world and affected Russia, has been covered by Russia's state-owned media and the privately-owned media favoured by the Government in an extremely biased manner. On the one hand, the crisis is in the air, but on the other hand, there seems to be no crisis at all. TV news broadcasts permanently assert that the crisis has delivered another blow to the U.S., EU, and other countries' financial systems, and what measures those countries' governments have undertaken to rectify the situation.
Russia's Health and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on social benefits for disabled persons. Last May, President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree on social benefits for disabled persons giving them a choice of receiving a car or a 100,000 rouble compensation in cash.
The Government's financial aid to Russian mothers bore tangible fruit this year. By the end of the year 1.7 million babies will be born in Russia, the birth rate is up 10%, the Social Insurance Fund announced yesterday. One contributing factor was last year's introduction of a programme of maternity certificates and the allocation of "mother's capital" at the birth of a second child. Financial market problems should not affect the birth rate dynamics in the country. This was the objective Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set for the Minister of Health and Social Development, Tatyana Golikova, yesterday. The Minister had some good news for the Premier.
Before the week is out, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin may sign a resolution on the criteria for state investments in Russian shares and bonds. The first money could reach the market within a week's time.
