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
President Barak Obama will personally join Chicago's bid to host the 2016 Olympics by going to Copenhagen, where the fate of the next Olympics will be decided.
Russian authorities believe the process for developing the country’s financial system must be changed, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin told a forum organized by VTB Capital yesterday.
Russia’s currency will be floated, but there will be no sharp devaluations.
Yesterday, the presidential residence Bocharov Ruchei in Sochi had open doors. At first, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited President Dmitry Medvedev. The chief executives discussed the domestic conditions, took a walk along the shore and played a set of badminton (with the active participation of Medvedev’s Retriever Aldo).
Vladimir and Lyudmila Putin attended a Larisa Dolina concert yesterday at the Festivalny concert hall.
We had a hunch that the Ostrovok (Islet) cafe would become the most popular place in Sochi overnight. After all, it just recently served two rather high-profile guests: the President and the Prime Minister. No doubt, we thought, it's probably impossible to even get a table there now without making reservations...
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the first half of the day. Like President Dmitry Medvedev, he was in Sochi this week.
US, EU, and Georgia unhappy with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Abkhazia.
Economy-class housing should not cost more than 30,000 roubles per square metre, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin believes.
The preparations for a forecast of Russia’s economic development until 2030 have been postponed for a year.
The government has decided not to push forward the preparation of a forecast of Russia’s social and economic development until 2030. Initially, it was to be made public by August 1, 2009, but the Ministry of Economic Development was given a respite until November 2010. Analysts think this is a reasonable decision: even a one-year plan is difficult during the crisis, much less long-term planning.
The government has made its decision about the 2010 budget which, according to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s promises, is to be “socially-oriented.”
Environmentalists protest against the construction of the Adler-Krasnaya Polyana road.
Over 40% of the population will be able to afford housing made cheaper by command.
Parallels between economic processes in Russia and Nigeria as two major oil producers have become somewhat common in the media prompting one to make a search for them and to try to understand whether they really exist. Surely, there are differences between the two countries, but there are similarities as well.
At the beginning of August Vladimir Putin set the bonuses for all Russian athletes who win medals at World and European championships in Olympic sports. The estimated reward for a gold medal at a world championship is $7,000, a silver medal at $3,500, and a bronze medal at $2,100. A gold medal at a European championship is worth $3,500, silver $1,750 and bronze $1,005. This averages out as $4,200 for world medals and $2,100 for European ones. So it seems that, for the Prime Minister, the world is twice as important as Europe. It is not known what he based this decision on. However if we were to compare Europe and the world by a variety of indicators we would not get a ratio of 1:2. So, the value of a European medal could have been different, especially if we were to take the value of a world medal as a constant.
On Friday, Dmitry Medvedev met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The two leaders had a productive discussion and expressed support for the idea of a global economic charter. They also discussed the potential take-over of Opel by the consortium of Russian Sberbank and Canadian Magna Corporation.
Economy-class housing should not cost more than 30,000 roubles per square metre. By saying this at a conference on national projects in Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has “put a new target” for government officials. The government is even ready to scrape the bottom of the barrel and provide additional funds for this purpose. There will be no economising on Russians’ health either.
The cost of economy-class housing should not exceed 30,000 roubles per square metre, said Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The government is willing to buy out apartments from construction companies at this price.
Intensive guesswork about who would be the next president, strange reshuffling of personnel and big political shows – this is how we will remember the year 2007. An abrupt change of pattern in the political kaleidoscope prevented many from believing Vladimir Putin’s final decision to become the Prime Minister under President Dmitry Medvedev.
Not so long ago Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made the heads of leading banks a promise that they would not go on leave: “Until you bring the total credit portfolio to half a billion roubles, don’t even think about a holiday.” The bankers seem to be anxious to go to the seaside. The head of VTB, Andrei Kostin, rushed to Sochi yesterday to personally report to the Prime Minister on his progress. After hearing the report, Mr Putin told him to take a rest – for a week.
Izvestia published a photograph of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin watching a football game at a café in Sochi. The Premier is having a beer but the President only tea. Why? Besides that, what is so special about the café that it attracts such customers? We would like to know more details.
Alexander Prishchepa, Troitsk.
According to the international media, “Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili claims that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is still set on killing him as part of his plan to restore the Soviet empire.” To bolster his claim Mikheil Saakashvili cites a remark made by Nicolas Sarkozy, after an angry Mr Putin told him he wanted to see his Georgian counterpart strung up by a certain part of his body. Psychoanalysts point out that “an acute fear of castration may lead to the narcissistic exaggeration of the phallus and be a hindrance to independence, autonomy and healthy sense of pride”. Mikheil Saakashvili’s lamentable mental state clearly bears out Freud’s thesis.
By now, everybody has seen the footage of the newly-built maternity home in Sukhumi where the head doctor told Prime Minister Putin that newborn twins had been named Vladimir and Dmitry in his and President Medvedev’s honour. Izvestia rang up the Sukhumi maternity home to find out how the lucky mother felt about these names.
Vladimir Putin asked the heads of government-owned banks not to go on leave without his consent in late June, when he discovered that they had failed to meet the target of increasing their credit portfolios by 2% a month set by the Prime Minister last winter.
Russia will spend over 25 billion roubles on Abkhazia, including 15 billion to build up Russian military bases and Abkhazia’s border facilities.
After a meeting, Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin took a walk down the Sochi embankment to a café, where they watched a live football match between the Russian national football team and the Argentinean national team.
Contrary to the President’s instructions, the all-Russia population census will be delayed for two years.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made his first visit to Abkhazia as a Russian leader after the Soviet Union’s disintegration. He laid flowers to the Glory Memorial in Sukhum, and visited a maternity home, which opened a few days ago. The first twins born there shortly before his appearance were called Vladimir and Dmitry in honour of the Russian prime minister and the president.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who had been to Abkhazia only a couple of times many years ago while still a student, paid an official visit to this independent republic yesterday. He came to commemorate August 12, a special date for Abkhazia. One year ago, Abkhazia reclaimed the Kodor Gorge, the last territory controlled by Georgia after the war of 1992-1993. Putin was welcomed in Sukhumi as a protector of the people, a title he obviously cherished.
In spite of the crisis some regions have substantially increased the salaries of civil servants and the spending on upkeep of government bodies, Vladimir Putin told a meeting on budget issues and regional development held in Kislovodsk yesterday. For the first time the prime minister was angry with the Moscow authorities, which had increased spending on themselves by almost a third.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Kislovodsk yesterday to conduct a meeting of the Regional Development Commission and to assess the health and recreation industry in the area.
Vladimir Putin urges regional governors meeting in Kislovodsk to cut spending on personal needs.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has signed an executive order fixing the size of bonuses to Russian athletes who win prizes in Olympic disciplines at various championships and to their coaches.
August has not yet brought any major upheavals, so stern critics of Russia have to make do with anniversaries and their analysis, which is a poor substitute for actual catastrophes. However, if stamped paper is not available, one writes on ordinary paper. The 10th anniversary of Mr Putin’s first appointment as prime minister is as good an occasion as any to announce that during the past decade Russia has managed to quarrel with the whole world and put itself in total isolation.
Ever since Dmitry Medvedev moved into the Kremlin and Putin into the Government House, high-ranking officials have been reluctant to discuss who would be the next presidential candidate nominated by the party in power.
As the crisis in Russia spreads and deepens discussions on how to cope with it become more complicated. They put on the agenda not only the issue of oil prices, but the quality of government, the whole social and political setup in this country.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has taken questions from foreign journalists.
Vladimir Putin is on a working leave in Sochi. Although he will not stay long, Sochi, as usual, will temporarily become the “nerve centre of Russian politics”.
Even as Vladimir Putin was speaking in Irkutsk about the great role Siberia plays in Russia, the Kurzanka River which flows near Irkutsk burst its banks and flooded part of federal highway M-53 linking Siberia to Russia. The virtual separation of Russia from half of the country – Eastern Siberia and the Far East – in a place called Traktovo-Kurzan was as humdrum and trite as the hackneyed phrases about Russia’s might increasing due to Siberia.
Transcript of the August 7, 2009 programme.
There is no plan, no future, but there is something to lose.
Below is our talk with political scientist Andrei PIONTKOVSKY
It was just a year ago when the five-day war between Russia and Georgia broke out. On the eve of the anniversary, Kommersant’s Olga Allenova visited Georgia and South Ossetia to see how the situation has changed over the past year.
Throughout last week Vladimir Putin startled everyone with a flurry of activities: he saved dolphins, galloped on horseback stripped to the waist, gave his watch to a shepherd’s son, dropped to the depths of Lake Baikal and swam butterfly style. Some of these things may appear odd, but only at first glance.
President Ramzan Kadyrov of Chechnya had some remarkable things to say during a recent interview with Radio Liberty.
What feelings does Vladimir Putin experience recalling the events of August 2008? Could there be a repeat of those events? The Russian Prime Minister has been sharing his thoughts about it with journalists:
Back in May Russia and Europe promised Ukraine a loan to buy Russian gas. European banks are ready to shell out $1.7 billion, but Moscow is reluctant to help its neighbour.
President Dmitry Medvedev’s approval rating has hit a record high of 59%, 4% up on the previous month, a poll of 2,000 people in 44 regions conducted by the Public Opinion Fund (FOM) on August 1-2, revealed. The previous high after his election as President was 57%.
On August 9, 1999, Vladimir Putin assumed the position of Prime Minister of Russia. At the time, it was difficult to imagine that the new prime minister, who later became president, would gain such enormous popularity in Russia and abroad, and that his approval ratings would even withstand the economic crisis. The Putin phenomenon, as studied by the most authoritative researchers, is largely based on two things: favorable historical circumstances and an outstanding intuition, which allows the prime minister to accurately gauge voter mood. At the same time, the analysts also point out the weakness in the system as created during the last ten years.
On August 6, 2009, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin arrived in Ankara, Turkey’s capital. Some twenty agreements and protocols were signed there, including those in the gas sector: on launching the construction of the Blue Stream-2 gas pipeline project and the beginning of exploration and construction of the South Stream project (Turkey is to issue an official permit for South Stream pipeline construction on November 1, 2010).
Another pair of competing pipelines may be built in South-Eastern Europe; the history of the Nabucco and South Stream gas pipelines may soon be revisited in the Samsun-Ceyhan and Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipelines, although this time Russia could be involved in both projects. Russia has agreed to get involved in the Samsun-Ceyhan project in exchange for Turkish support for Gazprom projects.
If one analyzes the system, “Putin" is a project, just like “Medvedev” is also a project. Like “Home 1”, “Home 2” or “Two Stars.” The difference between them is the teams involved in those projects. Perhaps the regular staff got a little tired of the “Putin” project having worked on it for ten years and would like to have a go at something else. On the other hand, the “Medvedev” project staff is new to the job, ambitious and would like to have more responsibility.
