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 United Russia Party has suggested creating a powerful PR service to promote the "Russia" brand in the West. The party believes that a new social communications agency should be set up for said purpose within the government structure. The main components of the brand, in their opinion, should be "Putin", "Medvedev" and "the Chelsea football team."
Being the true lawyer that he is, President Dmitry Medvedev likes to itemize everything, even in his oral speech. He divided political reform in his Address into ten "items", ranging from amendments to the Constitution to the rotation of party leaders.
Dmitry Medvedev's first Address to the Federal Assembly was more verbose than that of his predecessor. The duration of his speech, the number of characters, words and sentences exceeded Vladimir Putin's statistics, although Dmitry Medvedev spoke more slowly (see table). The new President's speech was punctuated by applause 56 times, compared with Mr Putin's record of 47 (2006).
A rivalry between Russia and the U.S. in the financial market, leading to the establishment of the rouble as the regional currency, has become official doctrine, underlying the development of the Russian financial market. President Dmitry Medvedev, who devoted part of his Address to this idea, announced the early steps in that direction: a speedy shift of oil and gas exports to rouble settlements.
President Dmitry Medvedev has announced an extension of the terms of the President and the State Duma. It is said at the Kremlin that the reform was conceived during now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's presidency and that he will be its main beneficiary.
On Saturday, Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, after one-on-one and enlarged-format talks, attended a concert given by Mireille Mathieu, whom they later invited to Qaddafi's Bedouin tent for tea. All this time, they were followed by Kommersant's Andrei Kolesnikov.
A Government Resolution has cut oil export duties by 22.8% since November 1, 2008. The Government approved the Finance Ministry's proposal to calculate the duty on the basis of oil prices slightly below $80 per barrel. The Government's decision, which will take effect retroactively (contrary to legislation), will allow Russian oil companies to save $1.9 billion by the year's end. The companies, which insist that the duty should be based on a price of $60 per barrel, claim that oil export has become a debt-making business for them.
Thanks to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the Anti-Monopoly Service has become a real power that only a few people dare to ignore. Gaining the service's attention is enough to make major oil companies toe the line and hurry to reduce fuel prices. Those who do not do it quickly enough face lawsuits. The service has been acting much more harshly than before. Since the beginning of 2008, it has filed over 150 lawsuits against oil companies, many of which were closed without issuing fines. Since July 11, when Mr Putin instructed the service to work more effectively, 24 suits have been filed. The service has won eight of them, and the total sum of fines accounts for about a half a billion roubles.
One of the leaders of the Republican Party, David Berdzenishvili, has been telling Olga Allenova why the Georgian opposition plans to take to the streets on November 7.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has no intention of giving up the traditional annual "live video links" with the people that started when he was President. Preparation for the next video link is already under way, mainly through the "public reception offices" of the Chairman of the United Russia Party in the regions. Representatives at these offices select questions for Prime Minister Putin, but complaints are also fed into a single electronic base so that Mr Putin can at any moment know what topics are foremost in people's minds.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was shown around his new website, www.premier.gov.ru, Friday. The project was presented to him by an unidentified team of developers. No comments have been made about his reaction, but he does not look particularly pleased in the photo. On the other hand, perhaps he was simply annoyed by the need to use a one-button mouse, which feels foreign to most Russian PC users.
Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the official Prime Minister's website, www.premier.gov.ru, as KP reported on October 30. A presidential website, www.kremlin.ru, was created during Mr Putin's presidential tenure, and then went over to Dmitry Medvedev. The Prime Minister has, until recently, shared his personal web-portal with the government's site, www.government.ru. Now, he has a web resource of his own. After browsing it for a while, we came to several curious conclusions.
On November 6, a programme for the development of competition, prepared by the Economic Development Ministry, and a package of amendments to anti-monopoly legislation will be presented to the government's Council for Competition and Entrepreneurship at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The objective is to limit the powers of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) to only control monopolies. The list of steps to be agreed on with the FAS should, on the Ministry's suggestion, be trimmed down. The programme's ultimate aim is to dispense with much of the formality associated with relations regulation.
Just as he promised the other day, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting on economic issues at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence. The meeting was supposed to approve a comprehensive plan for supporting domestic industries. Russian banks now receiving massive federal allocations must not transfer them abroad and must not use them to buy dollars, either. On the contrary, the funding must be used to finance the Russian economy. An amended version of a plan, drafted on orders from President Dmitry Medvedev, is to be published in the next few days.
The personal website of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin went public on the Russian Government's Internet portal www.government.ru on Friday. The website address is: www.premier.gov.ru . The new Internet resource carries information on Vladimir Putin's work as the Head of Government. It features an archive of all the Premier's speeches and statements as well as articles about Putin published in Russian and foreign media. The site offers a considerable amount of audio and video information and more recently, a full photo gallery.
The financial crisis that broke out in the West has revealed flaws in the world financial architecture. In this context, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is not going to sit on its hands, but will work to create a multi-polar world. This was the main outcome of yesterday's meeting of the SCO heads of government in Astana.
The Russian Prime Minister attended a meeting of the heads of government of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation yesterday. Our special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV could see for himself that, throughout the day, Vladimir Putin was more concerned with what was happening in Russia in connection with the world financial crisis. A package of extra measures to assist the national industry was due to be published today, and our special correspondent tried to find out why it did not happen.
Addressing a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's heads of government in Astana on Wednesday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said, "A qualitatively new geopolitical situation is emerging, with accelerated strengthening of new centres of economic growth and political influence."
The world financial crisis has not spared the member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). The keynote of yesterday's meeting of the SCO heads of state in Astana was "No to the crisis".
No sooner had the ink dried on the October 28 agreements between Russian and Chinese Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin and Wen Jiabao, than Russian industrialists and analysts started sharply criticising them. The Union of Oil and Gas Equipment Manufacturers opposed an agreement on a tied Chinese loan for buying drilling equipment from China. Analysts said the agreements tied Moscow to Beijing, and would enable the Chinese side to dictate its terms to Russia.
