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
US President George Bush is not the only man who has a costly plan to bail out the financial sector. A similar, albeit somewhat cheaper, plan has been offered by the Russian Government. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made it clear yesterday that he was trying hard to disperse the clouds gathering over not only the American and European, but also the Russian economies.
Vladimir Putin announced unprecedented measures to support the financial system yesterday. The Central Bank will transfer about $50 billion to the Foreign Economic Bank (VEB) from gold and currency reserves. It will be used to issue loans to companies that are unable to pay back foreign credits.
The Bank of Russia has been told to issue unsecured stabilisation loans to the banking system, and Vnesheconombank (VEB) should pitch-in to solve the problems of the corporate sector, for which it will be issued $50 billion to refinance companies' credits. The decisions were made yesterday during a meeting at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office. The cost of the issue is at least 8% of the Central Bank reserves and a possible downgrade in the country's credit rating. Economists are sure that these actions will only be able to keep Russia's financial problems at bay until the end of the year.
The meeting of the Government Presidium, which was scheduled to discuss the plan for Russia's long-term development submitted by the Ministry of the Economy, has been canceled. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave another 48 hours to end the disputes over Plan-2020, which has been in the works since 2006.
Vladimir Putin met the head coach of the St Petersburg Zenit football squad, Dick Advocaat, on Saturday. The two men agreed that politicians and coaches are doomed to loneliness. Kommersant's special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV believes they should have included journalists in that list. He is sure that Dick Advocaat, who was planning to go to Holland, will stay in St Petersburg.
A Just Russia party complained to the prime minister of being oppressed in the State Duma. On Tuesday Vladimir Putin held a meeting with deputies representing this parliamentary party. The MPs explained why they voted against the draft budget, complained of plagiarism in the State Duma and compared the effectiveness of their lawmaking with that of a steam engine.
For the first time in six months the Cabinet met on the fifth floor of the White House after costly repairs had been completed. The Prime Minister's office, private apartment and the government conference hall are all on that floor. The Government Presidium is housed in the former reception room, which has been lavishly refurbished. Having reviewed the efforts of the authorities to deal with the liquidity crisis and stop the fall of stock exchange indexes, the Prime Minister declared that the market had in fact been restored.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, just back from Sochi, was obviously in an upbeat mood during the Monday meeting of the Cabinet, in spite of all the financial troubles. Before he presented himself to the full Presidium in the revamped office he had gone into a huddle with Central Bank President Sergei Ignatyev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, the Minister of Telecommunications and Mass Communications Igor Shchyogolev, and then again with Mr Kudrin.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin moved into a new office in September, as planned. Yesterday he moved from the third to the fifth floor, into the refurbished Prime Minister's area to chair the first meeting of the Government Presidium after his leave to review the stock market crisis. In the new and brighter office the financial crisis looked as good as over.
Late Thursday night, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the top executives of major international companies, including Deutsche Bank, Siemens AG, Mitsubishi, Chevron, BP and other participants of the Sochi International Investment Forum.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has left chilly Moscow for subtropical Sochi. He will spend the next two days convincing the world business community that the economic crisis will bypass Russia, despite the slumping stock market. He met with foreign entrepreneurs on Thursday, and will address an investment forum next Friday and then meet with Russia's top financial managers.
Vladimir Putin has settled in the Riviera, a prime-ministerial residence next to a park of the same name, in Sochi. Journalists from the Government pool were first admitted to it a few days ago.
On September 18, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received foreign businessmen who had come to the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi to take part in the Sochi Economic Forum. Andrei Kolesnikov, a Kommersant special correspondent, regarded this meeting as the presentation of the Government's economic mobilisation plan.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Presidium of the Council for the Preparation for the 2014 Olympics. Kommersant special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov reported that the unresolved problems surrounding the preparation for the Olympics made the Prime Minister blow his top. Mr Putin gave an ultimatum to the members of the Presidium demanding that they resolve matters by the next morning - not before and not after.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hosted a video conference between the officers of the emergency operations centre in charge of dealing with the consequences of the armed conflict in South Ossetia. At the emergency centre of the Ministry for Emergency Situations, Mr Putin listened to the progress reports by the ministers and had a video conference with people in Tskhinvali and Vladikavkaz. The Prime Minister made a statement that, given the status of South Ossetia as an independent and sovereign state, funding will flow from the Russian state treasury straight to the republic. Eduard Kokoity, the President of South Ossetia, has promised that any utility, medical and transport services will be provided in the republic free of charge through January 1, 2009.
On September 12, Dmitry Medvedev had his first meeting with a large group of political scientists and journalists specialising in Russian affairs - participants in the international Valdai Discussion Club. It was essential for western experts to understand "who is Mr Medvedev", and hear information about the situation in the Caucasus first-hand.
An emotion-laden interview Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave to Russian and foreign journalists attending the international Valdai Discussion Club suggests some parallels between Russia's present confrontation with the West and the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In both cases the two sides discuss the same thing, but absolutely misunderstand each other. Will the North Caucasus detonate an explosion like the Balkans in 1914? We have asked political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, the founder of the National Strategy Institute, to answer this question while commenting on "hot" quotations from Mr Putin.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave an interview to the newspaper Le Figaro. He described an American plot and Russian economic progress, and explained his relationship with Dmitry Medvedev.
Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to respond to the US humanitarian aid deliveries to Georgian sea ports by US naval ships, mentioning however that this will be done "calmly, without hysteria". The Prime Minister was irritated by the fact that naval ships "fitted with cutting edge missile systems" were just 200 kilometres away from the Russian presidential residence outside Sochi. The appropriate response was prepared and approved.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent meeting with members of the Valdai International Discussion Club has demonstrated, or rather confirmed, major changes in his behaviour. I can now understand some things in his behaviour, such as his short "er" that punctuates his otherwise smooth speech, the slow tempo of his speech, although people in St Petersburg, where Putin lived and worked before coming to Moscow, are rapid speakers. He apparently disciplined himself to search for appropriate words.
