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
On October 6, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin flew to Minsk and attended a regular meeting of the Union State's Council of Ministers at Zaslavl residence near the Belarusian capital. On his way to the meeting, Putin negotiated with President Alexander Lukashenko at the republican Presidential Administration.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered to create a "currency pool" with Belarus, its partner in the Union State, and use the Russian rouble in energy trade with Russia at least as long as the financial markets remained jittery. The idea is, in effect, to peg the Belarusian rouble to the Russian rouble. But, as with the adoption of the Russian rouble, Belarus will still have to change its budget policy if it joins the pool.
Belarus will not bargain away its friendship with Russia. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko was trying to reassure Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday. The rest of the negotiations lacked concrete substance.
I recall how Russians were stunned early on in Putin's presidency when he used the expression "we'll waste them in the shithouse." It signalled the start of the invasion of street slang into Russian political vocabulary. Encouraged by the popular masses, the President made a point of peppering his speech with vernacular expressions. He did not care whether he was addressing home or foreign audiences: let the translators figure it out. The translators struggled indeed. They tried to fit his Russian vernacular into the framework of Western political correctness. The result was lamentable, with Putin triumphing over political correctness.
His working visit was packed: first, he had a conversation with Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and then held extended two-way negotiations. In the evening, he chaired a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Russia-Belarus Union State.
"This is not about the negligence of individuals, it is about the negligence of the whole system. A system that is incapable of providing leadership and even making absolutely vital decisions to overcome crisis phenomena." Prime Minister Vladimir Putin thus squarely and bluntly put all the blame for the storm in the world economy on Washington. But while "the house that Bush built" is no good, what about the house that Putin built? Pampered by sky-high oil prices and an upturn in the world economy, the political and economic system created by Putin appeared to be relatively effective. But will it be as competitive when the world is heading for trouble?
Last week marked a landmark of sorts: Vladimir Putin has now been Prime Minister for exactly the same period as his first premiership in 1999. This prompted Vlast to compare the two premiers' track records. It found that the Putin of 1999 was far more active than the Putin of 2008, but had shown rather less interest in the domestic economy.
Starting January 1, 2010, the president of an oil company with a monthly salary of 100 million roubles will cost this company the same price as a cafeteria worker with a salary of 35,000 roubles. "We did it to prevent people with low or average salaries from getting the future pension payments of people with high salaries," Vladimir Putin said.
To date, there has been only one street named after Vladimir Putin. One of the two streets in the village of Olgeti in Ingushetia was named after Russia's second President on October 5, 2002. Reportedly, the local people had themselves asked that the street be named after the President "as a token of gratitude to the authorities for assistance in the reconstruction of the village, which was destroyed in a mud slide".
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had to fly to Moscow for talks on gas prices with Vladimir Putin aboard an eight-seat Cessna aircraft because President Viktor Yushchenko had taken her plane.
