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 programme of subsidising education loans Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised students as of December 1 was never launched. The paperwork is held up by the Justice Ministry. The government has kept loans for students at the annual rate of 5% on its agenda, but the banks are not in a hurry to grant them, citing the high cost of borrowed money.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a Federal Targeted Programme (FTP) “The Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation in 2009-2015”.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman completed his visit to Moscow at the end of last week by having talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Three days after the crash of the Neva Express there was a blast on a railway in Dagestan, which attracted far less attention because it claimed no victims. Vladimir Putin said there was a link between the two terrorist attacks, but many in Dagestan attribute the explosive situation in the region not so much to the increased activity of the militants as the approaching change of government.
Vladimir Putin has held a diagnostic meeting with the country’s population: he heard all the “case histories” and issued recipes and prescriptions.
How profound is the programme of political modernisation initiated by the president? What does "being in opposition" mean in Russia? Is it possible to create another governing party committed to modernising the country? Itogy has put these questions to the leader of Just Russia party and speaker of the Federation Council, Sergey Mironov.
Because serious discussion of politics and economics is comparatively new in this country, we tend to overestimate the opinion of practitioners. Politicians and business people have recently defended rafts of doctoral dissertations: this is of course absurd, and one can safely leave these dissertations unread. A professional politician or a businessman has as much chance of producing a meaningful research paper as a scientist to make millions trading on the stock exchange in the after hours or to become the country’s president without leaving his study. However, outside the scholarly world, things are more complicated: we often trust the words of practitioners even when they do not know whereof they speak.
Putin’s live phone-ins during which he talks directly with the citizens is becoming the longest and one of the most popular annual TV extravaganzas.
On December 3, the Prime Minister answered questions from the Russian people in a live phone-in programme (you can read the transcript on our site kp.ru). Immediately after the broadcast bureaucrats at all levels began to react. The reactions varied, however.
Vladimir Putin has reviewed the summary of the Cherkizovsky Market closure. He said the move gave a boost to domestic production in Russia.
“I have thought all along (and the phone-in, unfortunately, confirmed my point of view) that the prevailing thinking in Russia is that all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. And not a word has been said about the results that we are supposed to get. For example, whether a thousand, two thousand or three thousand kilometers of highways will be built with our money.
Vladimir Putin’s statement regarding how the Russian people benefited from the sale of YUKOS assets elicited this comment from Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of YUKOS, at the Khamovnichesky law court. Khodorkovsky told presiding judge Viktor Danilkin:
A review of Vladimir Putin’s phone-in programmes from 2001 to the present time.
State corporations have recently engaged the minds of Russian leaders and analysts. There is no consensus about the practicability of continued use of that economic instrument and the measures aimed at improving it.
The audience at Gostiny Dvor from where the Prime Minister addressed the people yesterday consisted of workers and students. Not a single government bureaucrat.
It was a warm sunny day in Rome when the Russian President arrived for a working visit yesterday. Dmitry Medvedev, like the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who greeted him at the entrance to the government villa Madama wore no overcoat even though it was December.
“Putin gave you this promise, so go and ask Putin”… This is the formula local bureaucrats use freely when refusing to do what they must do, as it became clear during the course of Putin’s live phone-in programme. The excuse is used even when there should be no place for it: for example, in turning down a request for a flat by a World War II veteran. After the live video link Izvestia asked the Prime Minister what he was going to do about such bureaucrats.
All the plans for developing power generating capacity must be fulfilled, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday: “We cannot afford to be late in developing the power industry. Russia should build 10 GW in 2010-2011,” the Prime Minister said.
The government will help the United Aircraft Corporation (OAK) out of the debt pit. “We will contribute several billion roubles to its authorised capital and reschedule a further 46 billion roubles of its debts over the coming years,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced yesterday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has not forgotten about Pikalyovo. In his phone-in broadcast yesterday he promised that the industries in Pikalyovo would sign long-term contracts for the supply of raw materials very soon.
