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
Traders yesterday fell a few kopecks short of testing the Central Bank’s promise to keep the national currency at the level of 41 roubles for a two-currency basket. Trading at MICEX closed yesterday with the dollar at 36.2 roubles, but the Central Bank was unperturbed. And indeed, nobody chose to attack the rouble, which has approached the announced limit, and it is even less likely today: Prime Minister Vladimir Putin explained the day before that the issues of additional capitalisation of banks and currency speculation would be linked.
The economic crisis and the gas war with Ukraine overshadowed some notable shifts that have been happening in the relations between Russia and the West in recent weeks. Russia, for the first time recently, took real steps to normalise the relations: It resumed dialogue with NATO and announced that it would not deploy its Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad Region.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a meeting with Siemens AG President Peter Löscher,and President of the state corporation Rosatom Sergei Kiriyenko at the White House yesterday. The meeting sent an important signal to the world nuclear industry. The Prime Minister said that Rosatom and Siemens were ready for a full-scale strategic partnership in the nuclear energy field. The fact that the announcement was first made by Mr Putin and not by the immediate parties involved, shows that the decision has high-level support. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to express her position on the issue at a meeting between the German energy agency and Russia’s Mosenergo in Berlin today. “We are ready to pass on from one-off projects to forging a full-scale partnership between Siemens and the Russian Rosatom. We could work actively both in Russia and in Germany, as well as in the markets of third countries,” Mr Putin said.
Transport Minister Igor Levitin spent three days in Sochi to inspect transport infrastructural construction and summarised what he had seen for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and an International Olympic Committee delegation.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin managed to demonstrate his fluency in German at the 74th International Green Week Berlin exhibition, Volgograd Region Governor Nikolai Maksyuta told a press conference. The exhibition took place January 16 through 25 in Germany.
On February 2, Cuban President Raúl Castro met with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as part of his visit in Moscow. The meeting summed up the remarkable results of the Caribbean state leader’s visit, with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev agreeing to grant multi-million dollar state loans to Cuba. Interestingly, it is reported that the sum finally agreed by the two presidents turned out to be 18 times higher than initially planned.
Many think that the Kremlin owes its consolidated power and dominion over the public to nothing but exorbitant oil prices of the recent years. But then, Vladimir Putin received public support even when oil went for $40 a barrel. He started as the President of Hope and a clever psychotherapist who would say nothing that might upset his patients.
The concept of "Russia as a safe haven" was presented at the Davos forum a year ago. It was assumed then that amid the world financial crisis, which was widely expected, the Russian markets would remain stable. "Interest in Russia as an island of stability will grow," the Russian Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin was trying to convince the world economic elite. "The US economy is on the edge of recession and world economic growth is slowing down," he said.
The April 2009 deadline for the start of the active phase of the construction of Olympic facilities may not be met. Independent experts think that the authorities have not yet put in place the legal framework for a civilized approach to the confiscation of land owned by Sochi’s residents for the building of Olympic facilities.
The election of the Patriarch the Russian Orthodox Church proved that, for all its flaws, it was a far more vibrant and democratic organism than the Russian state. The contest for the throne of the Patriarch was far more dramatic than that for the presidency and attracted almost as much interest.
The crisis makes its own corrections in social and economic plans and government promises. Some of them become impracticable even in theory. Among such promises is the task set by then President Vladimir Putin in July 2003 of doubling the country’s GDP within ten years. Even then, many economists doubted that this task was feasible. However, using some adjustments and forced argument, a formula was devised which, it seemed, made it possible to receive the desired effect. It was decided to take the year 2000, not 2003, as a reference point: at that time, the economy was growing exponentially after the 1998 crisis due to the effect of the poor economic base. Several months ago Vladimir Putin confirmed his forecast and promised a doubled GDP by late 2009 or early 2010. However, the latest forecasts and data of the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) show that the present government will have to take this promise off the agenda.
For politics. The past week saw two significant events, the first of which was a big surprise and the second had been widely expected. Vladimir Putin's peace-loving speech in Davos about the dangers of government interference in the economy gave the impression of having nothing to do with the way the Russian Government had behaved for many years.
Last weekend saw the most massive street rallies over the financial crisis in recent times. The opposition called for the resignation of the Putin Government. United Russia activists took to the streets to defend their leader. No clashes between civilians occurred but several dozen opposition protesters suffered as a result of provocations and in clashes with the police.
The biggest protest rally took place in Vladivostok, where 2,500 people marched down Svetlanskaya Street defying an official ban. The Communists, joined by car-owners' movement activists carried posters addressed to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin: "Vlad, out" and "Putler Kaput".
On NOVATEK's Board of Directors. Gennady Timchenko, co-owner of the Swiss Gunvor, may become a member of the board of directors of Russia's biggest independent gas producer, NOVATEK, Kommersant has learnt. He will replace the former Anti-Monopoly Policy Minister Ilya Yuzhanov.
A year ago Russian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, addressing the Davos Economic Forum, said that Russia was an island of stability in the ocean of the world crisis. This year, considering that the crisis is raging in Russia as well, the marine metaphor had to be tweaked a little bit. First, the delegation to the forum was led by the captain himself, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Second, in his keynote speech the latter described the world crisis as a "perfect storm" that had caught Russia in its epicentre along with other countries. The main question that everybody wanted answered was whether the world would be able to survive the raging elements and stay afloat and what the losses would be.
On February 3, 2009, the Supreme State Council of the Russia-Belarus Union State will meet in Moscow to endorse a plan of joint action aimed at overcoming the consequences of the crisis. On January 30, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart Sergei Sidorsky signed the relevant document at a meeting of the Council of Ministers of the Union State.
Vladimir Putin takes IOC Chairman for a ride on Sochi's new road. The visit of high-ranking International Olympic officials to Sochi ended with a display of admiration.
Davos offered further proof that the whole world was intently watching Russia and Vladimir Putin. The reaction to the Prime Minister's behaviour is, more often than not, negative.
OAO Rostelecom and OAO Megaphone became the first Russian sponsors of the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi. A sponsorship agreement was signed with the Sochi-2014 Organizing Committee on Saturday. It is a record sponsorship contract at the national level worth $260 million. In addition, the companies will invest $200 million in the development of Sochi's telecom infrastructure.
