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
Following Boris Gryzlov, Vladimir Putin will visit Sukhumi.
Prime Minister Putin: I believe that five ice arenas on the Black Sea coast are too many.
It has been a year since Dmitry Medvedev assumed the office of President and Vladimir Putin that of Prime Minister. Time puts everything in its place, and many things have become clearer during the year of dual power.
Talks with the Obama Administration begin in Moscow.
Kommersant has learned that the company Ernst & Young has evaluated the 28% stake in Moscow City Telephone Network (MGTS) belonging to Svyazinvest at more than 12 billion roubles. Earlier, the principal owner of AFK Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that he was ready to give back to the state 25% plus one share in Svyazinvest (23.7 billion roubles) in exchange for a write-off of its debt to Sberbank (26 billion roubles) and a share of the state holding in MGTS (at present Sistema owns 66% of voting shares).
The Government Sustained Economy Commission headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov has approved the preparation of amendments to legislation that supports budget settlements under state order with enterprises through special accounts. The proposals on introducing a special procedure for disbursing budget allocations for these purposes have been developed on a directive of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the specific measures were developed by the Finance Ministry.
The State Duma last week admitted for consideration a bill proposed by the President whereby the Chairman of the Constitutional Court would be nominated by the head of state and confirmed by the Federation Council. If the amendment is adopted, Russia will lose its last government body that is not part of the vertical power structure.
Russia is full of surprises. Nowhere else have well-educated members of the Young Communist League grown rich as quickly by consistently applying capitalist methods of robbery. And nowhere else have these new capitalists grown poor again because of capitalism.
The Kremlin has long been urging the need to drop the Cold War clichés with regard to Russia. Our commentator IGOR FEDYUKIN has discovered in the book by American analyst Jeffrey Mankoff practical tips for Barack Obama on how to successfully “reset” the relations with Russia.
Russia and Europe are engaged in a war of nerves, each lobbying for their own massive gas pipeline projects: South Stream and Nabucco. Nevertheless, however protracted and costly this war may be, Russia is almost certain to lose its status as an energy superpower.
The day after meeting with Silvio Berlusconi Vladimir Putin received Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan at his Riviera residence in Sochi. The Russian Prime Minister drove to the meeting at the wheel of his own Niva, bought about a month earlier: license number 001, 270 kilometres. The car, in a camouflage paint scheme (including the interior) was delivered from Togliatti to Sochi on the same day.
Before meeting Russian President Medvedev in Moscow, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spent some time with his counterpart and friend Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Vladimir Putin personally met with Berlusconi at the airport and, taking to the wheel of his Mercedes, drove him to the hotel Radisson Lazurnaya, where the Prime Ministers held talks and witnessed the signing of several documents related to the implementation of the South Stream project.
The 54th Eurovision Contest in Russia has ended; the 55th will be hosted by Oslo, Norway.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan at his Riviera residence in Sochi last Saturday. The Russian Prime Minister arrived at the venue of the talks driving his recently acquired Russian-made Niva.
Gazprom will double the capacity of the South Stream pipeline and consider building a second line of Blue Stream.
Vladimir Putin flew into Sochi from Mongolia on Friday night. Having caught up with his sleep to the sound of the falling rain (there have been torrential downpours in Sochi), the Prime Minister met with the President of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh.
Today Russia finally has an answer to the European Union’s plans for the Nabucco gas pipeline. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is meeting with his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, in Sochi, where they will issue a joint announcement on the South Stream gas pipeline project. In addition, Gazprom is signing a corresponding agreement with Greece’s DESFA, Bulgaria’s Bulgarian Energy Holding, and Serbia’s Srbijagas. However, even Silvio Berlusconi’s purely symbolic participation in this event is something for which Russian business will have to pay dearly.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the President of the Republic of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh, met at Putin’s Sochi residence Riviera, where the President of Abkhazia said he was offered a loan of no less than one billion roubles. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov was surprised that the President of Abkhazia does not consider this a significant sum of money for either himself or Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with Sergei Bagapsh, the President of Abkhazia, at his Sochi residence Riviera. After the meeting, during which the two leaders discussed “mutually beneficial projects”, such as energy, railways, the sea shelf, and tourism, Mr Bagapsh told journalists that Abkhazia would get a loan of between 1 and 1.5 billion roubles. Moreover, he said that Abkhazia would closely follow developments regarding Georgia’s progress in joining NATO.
On Thursday the International Olympic Committee’s coordinating commission concluded their inspection of Sochi by dining with Vladimir Putin. In the two days that the IOC experts spent in the city that is to host the 2014 winter Olympics they saw, as Jean-Claude Killy said, “mind-blowing presentations and animated films” as well as the construction of the port and the Roza Khutor ski resort. The inspectors’ verdict? Sochi’s preparations for 2014 are on schedule.
