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
Before introducing amendments to this year’s budget, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will discuss the amended parameters of the nation’s main financial document with the opposition parties in the Duma. The Communists are expected to be the first to meet with the Prime Minister. The KPRF at the Duma has prepared an updated anti-crisis package.
For three years the Government will be paying double compensation to Russians for “Soviet-era deposits”.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service Directorate in the Krasnoyarsk Territory has fined “Rys” (Lynx), a local shop that sells fishing and hunting gear. The antimonopoly body claims that the merchants unlawfully used a photograph of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Minister of Emergencies Sergei Shoigu fishing in Tyva for advertising purposes. The shop may face a fine of up to 500,000 roubles.
Addressing a meeting of the Government Presidium in Moscow yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned that Russia could suspend supplies of our energy resources to Ukraine and Europe. He also promised another $500 million loan to Belarus, which is a more reliable partner. He also appointed his reliable Minister of Agriculture, Alexei Gordeyev, as Governor of the Voronezh Region.
At a government presidium meeting on March 5, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin asked the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service to look into a paradoxical situation that had evolved in the agricultural sector: wholesale prices of oils and lubricants are rising despite the stabilisation of oil prices at $40-$45 per barrel.
The rouble will not fall – a promise made yesterday by the Russian Prime Minister at a meeting with members of the public. He said that even a temporary fall in oil prices could not threaten the rouble. Experts say that the Central Bank has no grounds to devalue the rouble at present, although they note that Mr Putin's words should be taken only as a short-term forecast. There are currently no preconditions for a fall of the rouble. In fact, the rouble could strengthen. That is what Prime Minister Putin said when he met with members of the public in a job centre in Podolsk.
Last February there was something like the thaw – well, not quite the thaw, but a new programme was launched, which sought to free Russia of its current masters.
Yesterday Russia’s unemployment figures fell - by two people at least. The Minister for Healthcare and Social Development, Tatyana Golikova, set the precedent. She spent Wednesday morning at the Federation Council (see page 12) but in the afternoon she found herself in Podolksk, near Moscow. Having met an unemployed cook, Mikhail Vershinin, in the town centre, the minister got him a job at the ZiO-Podolsk Machine-Building Factory loading cargo.
In the first ten months of his premiership, Mr Putin has visited four universities (in Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, St Petersburg and Vladivostok), but not once (at least publicly) has he chaired a meeting on the issues of higher education. Yesterday the Prime Minister filled this gap.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MFTI) at Dolgoprudny, outside Moscow, yesterday. There he inspected several laboratories and a student hostel, and chaired a meeting on higher education. But his most important discovery was that there were such people on Earth as MFTI students, and the Prime Minister hugely enjoyed his conversation with them.
The need to offset the budget deficit in 2009 out of the Reserve Fund will make it necessary to amend the Law On the Budget, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a meeting on economic issues yesterday.
Vladimir Putin began his working week with the Big Russian Encyclopedia brought to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence by Yuri Osipov, the President of the RAS.
The United Russia has won elections to the legislatures of all the nine regions held last Sunday. True, it performed less well than in the Duma elections in 2007 when the situation in the country was stable. The most noticeable drop of confidence in “the party of power” was at the municipal level. Experts attribute it to the fact that the crisis has loosened the link in people’s minds between the images of United Russia and its leader Vladimir Putin. The opposition has failed to capitalise on the obvious social demand for left-wing ideas.
President Medvedev’s media quotation index outstrips Vladimir Putin’s for the first time.
Medvedev and Putin are latter-day Kutuzovs
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin uses every meeting with his Ministers to remind them that the crisis has stymied our ambitious plans and that now everything has to be planned anew. Yesterday’s meeting devoted to economic matters was no exception.
The forum Strategy-2020 held by the United Russia Party in Moscow yesterday was devoted to the first year of Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency. The conversation inevitably drifted toward a discussion of the economic crisis, as the two themes proved to be interconnected. One of the most notable speeches was made by the First Deputy Chief of the President’s Executive Office, who assured those present that the political system was working effectively while the calls for changing it were “extremely risky”.
Medvedev’s first year was long in terms of political events, and also very difficult, what with the war in the Caucasus and the economic crisis. He could have limited his efforts to clearing up the consequences of these events, but he has not. He advanced a large-scale programme for developing democratic institutions (“participatory democracy”), initiated a reform of the courts and a national anti-corruption plan, formed a personnel reserve, and proposed a concept for European security.
When I am asked to give my opinion on the government’s anti-crisis strategy, I tend to say: Which strategy? And, more dramatically, of which government?
I don’t want to say that we don’t have a Government. On the contrary, we have at least three Governments.
The Ministry of Finance thinks the Russian President’s interference in the country’s tax policy is unwarranted. This conclusion can be drawn from the ministry’s draft report to Dmitry Medvedev following his instructions to review the system of taxation for the coal sector.
