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
A number of analysts assessed the January 22 session of the State Council as a triumph of openness and pluralism, although in reality, it merely confirmed the immutability of the foundations of sovereign democracy.
Yesterday the government website published Prime Minister's resolution cancelling the preceding, 1996, version which restricted the use of the words "Russia," "Russian Federation" and "federal" in company and organisation names. However, the use of "state-related" words is as before, regulated by Russia's Civil Code.
Vladimir Putin meets with Russia’s Chief Rabbi, Berel Lazar, as an ally in the fight against the falsification of history.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called Jewish organisations allies helping Russia to counter false accounts of history.
Vladimir Putin celebrated Tatyana’s Day together with students of Chuvash State University in Cheboksary yesterday. During the tea party, the prime minister was reasonably frank in admitting that the Kremlin had impressed him the most, but modestly refused to admit that he was a “living saint.” He also refused to discuss his courting techniques, saying that the subject was too intimate.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin celebrated the Students’ Day as a student at Chuvash State University. However, instead of grinding away at his studies, the prime minister was offered homemade patties. During the hour-long meeting, the students managed to discuss with the prime minister all the problems that worry the young.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spent Tatyana’s Day, or Russian Students’ Day, in Cheboksary, the capital of Chuvashia. There, he met a group of students in the republican state university and discussed a wide range of issues with them – from the problems of foreign students and the scandalous TV show “School” to the development of innovations and support for small business. Putin did not avoid the compliments of the audience, but courageously tried to resist them.
Here we go again. Those reproaching Russia for a lack of politics inside the country, have been, for the umpteenth time, shown how wrong they are: if Russia is a state, it has to be managed, and state management, regardless of the methods it is managed by, is politics.
The agenda of the future parliamentary and presidential elections will have to be determined in spring. Meanwhile, part of the Russian political elite thinks that this question boils down to the trivial question, “who?”
The leaders of the opposition parties did not dare use the high rostrum of the State Council to offer far-reaching political reforms. They merely criticised the results of the October elections and complained about the governors and the legal system.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned governors of the North Caucasus Federal District that if they merely delegated their tasks to the municipal level and did not keep track of them, everything would continue as before – people would be forced to knock on doors, beg, plead, and offer bribes.
At the meeting of the State Council on Friday, President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set forth their views about the current state of the political system and the directions of its future development.
Chechnya will now be able to make its own customs clearance of incoming freight. Yesterday, Vladimir Putin signed the resolution to lift the ban on Chechen customs. The resolution also lifts the ban on the import of goods to the republic.
For the first time since being appointed Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin gave clear explanations on domestic policy issues, defending the political system he had created.
Governors of the North Caucasus Federal District will have to dismiss officials on Alexander Khloponin’s first request.
There is always someone in Perm to correct the prime minister if he makes a mistake.
Businesses are offered insurance policies as fire protection.
The price and characteristics of Russia’s grandiose plans to manufacture a new car were disclosed yesterday. Mikhail Prokhorov unveiled his plan for a “low-budget city car” to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during their meeting on Tuesday. It turns out that the car will not be as low-budget as it seems.
Deputies are concerned with the housing quality for the military.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Voronezh yesterday. He visited the Sozvezdie (Constellation) research and production centre to inspect how the decree he signed ten years ago has been executed. Later, the prime minister held a meeting at the city’s government on the Russian Armed Forces.
Analysts believed some time ago that Governor of Krasnoyarsk Territory Alexander Khloponin would succeed President Vladimir Putin. It may now seem ironic, but the proponents of this theory were almost right. On January 19, Khloponin was appointed Deputy Prime Minister for North Caucasian Affairs and Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the new North Caucasus Federal District.
Vladimir Putin has visited the Sozvezdiye concern in Voronezh. The name conceals a far from ordinary institution formerly called the Military Radio Communications Research Institute.
Yesterday saw a new spiral in the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Minsk which flared up in early January over Russian oil supplies to Belarus. President Alexander Lukashenko ordered the border guards to check reports about alleged tightening of the border control by Russia. At the same time it transpired yesterday that Dmitry Peskov, Prime Minister Putin’s press secretary, had sent a letter to the Washington Post arguing that the paper was misrepresenting Russia-Belarus differences. He described the Washington Post comments as “ill-thought-out and politically subversive” and not conducive to the solution of the problem.
Medvedev wins out in the information space, but Putin wins out in the real world.
An expert on political psychology is sure that the question of who will be the fourth Russian president is still open.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was in Voronezh yesterday to discuss the new look of the Russian Armed Forces with government ministers. The meeting took place at the Sozvezdiye concern created under Putin's decree when he was still president of the country, on the basis of an enterprise that dates back to 1958. Much of the plant still dates back to the Soviet times, and the same is true of our army. And yet the plant also produces some military equipment that has no analogues in the world.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting in Voronezh yesterday on the development of the Armed Forces’ automated command and control system. He did not mince his words and said that most of the control, reconnaissance and communications systems in the Russian Army were outdated and called for their drastic modernisation.
Russia continues development of its own army control system.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has called on the Defence Ministry to develop and supply the army with new command, control and communications systems. The Caucasus war had revealed an inadmissible lag in that sphere.
Russia is entering the third stage of its development since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Each stage builds on the previous stage without negating it. That is why historical continuity makes modernization according to Medvedev an absolutely real proposition.
Economic reforms will have to be resumed with or without Putin as Prime Minister.
The Pension Fund of Russia (PFR) will start collecting insurance premiums that replace the abolished Unified Social Tax as of February 15, 2010. During a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the head of the PFR, Anton Drozdov, reported that preparation for taking over some powers of the tax agencies have been completed.
Dmitry Medvedev becomes a highly paid photographer.
In 2010, Russia is sure to get new ministers and governors, new laws, and presidential decrees that improve people’s lives or make them more difficult. But what will remain unchanged, in the opinion of our observer Dmitry Kamyshev, is the tandemocracy regime established in the spring of 2008.
The Federal Drug Control Service will make sure that recently banned narcotics such as datura are not disguised for retail as innocuous goods, chief Viktor Ivanov assured Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Alcohol importers ask Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to postpone by six months the introduction of Customs Union regulations that would make it impossible to import wine into Russia. Otherwise, they warn, Russia may face a repeat of the 2006 wine crisis.
From now on, the chief of the Interior Ministry’s Investigative Committee will be appointed by the President, but the candidate will be proposed by the Prime Minister.
Two months ahead of the March regional elections, United Russia is way ahead of the three opposition parties.
After three months of operating at a profit, VTB moved into the red as it reported 3.8bn roubles in losses before consolidation eliminations in December, prompting the bank to boost its reserves.
Russian consumer watchdog Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Protection and Welfare) has received top-level support in its efforts to combat high chlorine content in imported poultry.
Government to work out a complex of measures to support high technologies.
After a meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev, the Turkish Prime Minister headed for the Russian government Reception House for talks with Vladimir Putin. This, their tenth meeting in the last five years, was, as usual, marked by an atmosphere of mutual trust, as Mr. Putin noted.
After a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin proposed deepening cooperation in the energy field by swapping assets. The assets he was referring to are access to the Black and Caspian Sea resources and to the Turkish gas and transportation system. Ankara has also promised to issue all the permits for the building of the South Stream gas pipeline before November. Gazprom says Turkey is thus joining its other strategic partners, Germany and Italy.
Vladimir Putin gives a boost to church property restitution.
President Dmitry Medvedev and later Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday received Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on his visit to Moscow.
At the first Cabinet meeting this year, Vladimir Putin outlined five key tasks the government should solve in the next 12 months.
Moscow hopes Ankara will agree to the building of the South Stream gas pipeline on its territory while promising to support Turkey’s bid to become the largest energy transit country between Europe and Asia. The two countries yesterday also agreed to swap energy assets.
As distinct from other countries Russia learned little from the past year.
What is happening in the country? Sociologists asked Russians to answer this question on the eve of the New Year. Considering the ongoing debates, they asked them to choose between the prospects of democracy and the authoritarian rule.
Russian-Belarusian negotiations reach a dead end.
