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
Vladimir Putin reminded Eurasec nations about the common Soviet economy.
Actress Alisa Freindlikh, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky met in the Hermitage on Saturday.
A solid legal basis has been provided for the movement of goods, capital and services among Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Russia is currently carrying out a very ambitious investment project. Prisoners are burning forests and villages in order to build power plants similar to the Sayano-Shushenskaya plant.
Yesterday Russia and Belarus set a record for the length of a top-level bilateral talk. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spoke for more than eight hours, celebrating the ten-year anniversary of the Union State.
Wolf Messing has captivated a large audience in Russia. Strictly speaking, it was not the famous psychic himself but a TV programme “Wolf Messing: Seeing through Time,” which was shown by the Rossiya television network for three weeks. Every evening a third of all television viewers chose to watch the programme about him – a telepath, psychic and a kind magician with sad eyes who could perform wonders. “Wonder” is a key word here. It explains why the audience was carried away by this artistically modest piece.
It was only a week ago that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin used a hotline in an attempt to pacify residents of the single-industry town of Pikalyovo near St Petersburg. "If the need arises, I will come ... but I don't think there is any need for me to come," Mr Putin said. Meanwhile, the dispute between the Pikalyovo companies erupted again.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will soon receive an honourary sixth-dan black belt in Kyokushin Karate-Do. The legendary Japanese champion Kyokushin Karate-Do master Hatsuo Royama who won silver at the First Absolute World Championships and who developed the basic Kyokushin technique is due to arrive in Moscow on Thursday and will present the belt to Prime Minister Putin.
The government has set a goal to reduce the country’s average interest rates on mortgages to 10% to 11% per year. The main condition for achieving the goal is to provide banks with resources with an interest of 6% to 7% per year.
"They will follow what he said as the downturn did. As far as I remember, the government declared Russia an island of stability. And the result was that Russia was tossed to and fro like no other country. Vladimir Putin will possibly work his magic on mortgage." (Bari Alibasov, popular music producer)
Dmitry Medvedev continued his negotiations with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh which began yesterday evening.
The 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9, 2009 was a day marked with exuberant celebrations across the globe by the "progressive public". This was in striking contrast to the tenth anniversary of the Russia-Belarus Union State, which falls on December 8 - and, incidentally, is something the world's "progressive public" and its Russian contingent are unlikely to notice.
The State Duma is expected to approve in the first reading a government-proposed bill aimed at strengthening the country’s budget system tomorrow. The document cancels or suspends many of the Budget Code provisions – in particular, the rule whereby a large chunk of oil and gas revenues goes straight into special funds instead of the budget. Now, for the next three years, oil and gas money will be placed at the disposal of the government. Experts have no doubt that these changes signal the start of financial preparations for the electoral cycle of 2011-2012. Notably, some of the experts interviewed by NG aren’t ruling out the possibility of an early election.
The West is wondering who makes the key decisions in Russia.
The authorities are set to review the results of the power industry’s reform in light of the problems exposed by the accident at the Sayano-Shushenskaya power plant. Addressing a meeting of top specialists in high technology, Vladimir Putin demanded that measures be taken to ensure a new level of safety in the energy sector. Earlier, government officials explained that the main problems in the sector stemmed from the “separation of the participants in a single technological process”.
The cost of utility services will grow 2.5 times faster than inflation in 2010.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Vishnevsky Surgical Research Institute yesterday, where nine of the victims of the fire at the Lame Horse club in Perm are being treated. The Prime Minister, accompanied by Healthcare and Social Development Minister Tatyana Golikova, as well as several chief doctors of Moscow hospitals, held a video conference on the treatment of the victims.
According to statements made by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin at a meeting of the government Council of general and chief designers, Russia should not only develop a new system of measures to ensure safety in the power industry, but all experts at energy facilities should be held personally responsible for compliance with technical regulations.
Vladimir Putin paid a visit to the Lenin All-Russia Electrical Engineering Institute yesterday. Founded back in 1921, it is the leading research centre in the field of electrical equipment. As part of the visit, Putin was supposed to take a look at sophisticated units and instruments and even watch some experiments with electricity that demonstrate how energy facilities can be made safer.
The Prime Minister promised to provide 84-year-old World War II veteran from Azov, Nina Demidenko, with a flat and within 40 minutes officials of the city administration were on the way to her home. Previously the same officials repeatedly turned down the old woman's petitions, but now the governor of Rostov Region took the case under his personal remit.
Vladimir Putin once again proved that he is amazingly well informed about the YUKOS case, even better informed than the Prosecutor General’s Office.
A week ago President Medvedev was at the centre of an international sensation when he proposed a draft European Security Treaty. Russian foreign policy has never seen a more ambitious undertaking.
Last Friday, United Russia was discussing the best way to help the President to choose three more heads of regions: in Tatarstan, the Saratov Region and the Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Area.
When times were good President Putin was more severe, more like the head of a great power, today he is more down-to-earth and folksy. Fewer declarations about national pride and attacks against the West, and a more conciliatory tone.
Pikalyovo trade union leader Svetlana Antropova was locked up by security services during Putin’s phone-in programme.
Vladimir Putin’s four-hour television appearance last Thursday revealed little connection with President Dmitry Medvedev’s calls for modernisation. Nothing the Prime Minister said reminded the audience of the cardinal changes the President called for in his Address to the Federal Assembly. Indeed, Prime Minister Putin’s answers to people’s questions ruled out the possibility of change even on matters that seriously worry the citizens. The audience was left in no doubt that the country is not going to see any change except when it is planned by Putin.
Iran needs to build 20 uranium enrichment plants to provide enough nuclear fuel for its nuclear power stations, the vice president and nuclear chief of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, said last weekend. Western observers say these plans will increase tensions in relations between Teheran and the international community. Our experts have suggested that Salehi’s statement indicates the growing influence of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) which presses for more public spending.
The residents of the Imeretinskaya Valley in the Adler District of Sochi staged a rally yesterday to protest their eviction from their plots of land. The protestors say that the situation at present is critical: the construction of Olympic projects has moved right up to their homes and they have nowhere to be relocated. After the rally, ten people in the Imeretinskaya Valley started a hunger strike which they will not end until Prime Minister Vladimir Putin meets with them. MK has been given an account of the problem by the local residents.
Vladimir Putin has scotched all the hopes of businessmen for a postponement of pension reform and for being able to save on social benefits. The transition from the Unified Social Tax (UST) to insurance payments, increased burden on wage funds and reevaluation of pension rights in 2010 will go ahead, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told the second All-Russia Pension Forum. As of January 1, previously acquired pension rights will be reassessed in the process of valorisation. As a result the old-age work pension will exceed 8000 roubles a month.
Receiving reports from the Emergencies, Internal Affairs, and Health and Social Development Ministers during a video conference on Saturday, Dmitry Medvedev described the tragedy in Perm as a serious crime and called for severe punishment of the culprits under the law. He was particularly outraged by the fact that the club owners had brazenly ignored fire safety rules and had tried to save their own skins by fleeing the country after what happened.
The programme of subsidising education loans Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised students as of December 1 was never launched. The paperwork is held up by the Justice Ministry. The government has kept loans for students at the annual rate of 5% on its agenda, but the banks are not in a hurry to grant them, citing the high cost of borrowed money.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed a Federal Targeted Programme (FTP) “The Development of Television and Radio Broadcasting in the Russian Federation in 2009-2015”.
The Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman completed his visit to Moscow at the end of last week by having talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Three days after the crash of the Neva Express there was a blast on a railway in Dagestan, which attracted far less attention because it claimed no victims. Vladimir Putin said there was a link between the two terrorist attacks, but many in Dagestan attribute the explosive situation in the region not so much to the increased activity of the militants as the approaching change of government.
Vladimir Putin has held a diagnostic meeting with the country’s population: he heard all the “case histories” and issued recipes and prescriptions.
How profound is the programme of political modernisation initiated by the president? What does "being in opposition" mean in Russia? Is it possible to create another governing party committed to modernising the country? Itogy has put these questions to the leader of Just Russia party and speaker of the Federation Council, Sergey Mironov.
Because serious discussion of politics and economics is comparatively new in this country, we tend to overestimate the opinion of practitioners. Politicians and business people have recently defended rafts of doctoral dissertations: this is of course absurd, and one can safely leave these dissertations unread. A professional politician or a businessman has as much chance of producing a meaningful research paper as a scientist to make millions trading on the stock exchange in the after hours or to become the country’s president without leaving his study. However, outside the scholarly world, things are more complicated: we often trust the words of practitioners even when they do not know whereof they speak.
Putin’s live phone-ins during which he talks directly with the citizens is becoming the longest and one of the most popular annual TV extravaganzas.
On December 3, the Prime Minister answered questions from the Russian people in a live phone-in programme (you can read the transcript on our site kp.ru). Immediately after the broadcast bureaucrats at all levels began to react. The reactions varied, however.
Vladimir Putin has reviewed the summary of the Cherkizovsky Market closure. He said the move gave a boost to domestic production in Russia.
“I have thought all along (and the phone-in, unfortunately, confirmed my point of view) that the prevailing thinking in Russia is that all problems can be solved by throwing money at them. And not a word has been said about the results that we are supposed to get. For example, whether a thousand, two thousand or three thousand kilometers of highways will be built with our money.
Vladimir Putin’s statement regarding how the Russian people benefited from the sale of YUKOS assets elicited this comment from Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former head of YUKOS, at the Khamovnichesky law court. Khodorkovsky told presiding judge Viktor Danilkin:
A review of Vladimir Putin’s phone-in programmes from 2001 to the present time.
State corporations have recently engaged the minds of Russian leaders and analysts. There is no consensus about the practicability of continued use of that economic instrument and the measures aimed at improving it.
The audience at Gostiny Dvor from where the Prime Minister addressed the people yesterday consisted of workers and students. Not a single government bureaucrat.
It was a warm sunny day in Rome when the Russian President arrived for a working visit yesterday. Dmitry Medvedev, like the Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who greeted him at the entrance to the government villa Madama wore no overcoat even though it was December.
“Putin gave you this promise, so go and ask Putin”… This is the formula local bureaucrats use freely when refusing to do what they must do, as it became clear during the course of Putin’s live phone-in programme. The excuse is used even when there should be no place for it: for example, in turning down a request for a flat by a World War II veteran. After the live video link Izvestia asked the Prime Minister what he was going to do about such bureaucrats.
All the plans for developing power generating capacity must be fulfilled, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday: “We cannot afford to be late in developing the power industry. Russia should build 10 GW in 2010-2011,” the Prime Minister said.
The government will help the United Aircraft Corporation (OAK) out of the debt pit. “We will contribute several billion roubles to its authorised capital and reschedule a further 46 billion roubles of its debts over the coming years,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced yesterday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has not forgotten about Pikalyovo. In his phone-in broadcast yesterday he promised that the industries in Pikalyovo would sign long-term contracts for the supply of raw materials very soon.
