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
Is it possible that Russia, by its very nature, simply cannot be integrated into the international community as part of a “greater Europe?” Is it rejected in Europe as a matter of sheer principle, or simply because the country’s leaders are not acceptable there? Fyodor Lukyanov sheds some light on this question in his article by analysing the history of Russia’s relations with the world under Vladimir Putin’s watch, from the initial rapprochement with the West to all the subsequent frustration and confrontation. In the 1990s, it was customary to say that the West “lost Russia”. Today, it is more common to hear the claim that Moscow’s policies have driven the US and Europe away from Russia. So, who exactly has “lost” whom?
A veritable miracle occurred in the boundless fields of Orenburg Region on Tuesday: the 35 degree heat that had plagued the region since May and destroyed a third of its crops suddenly gave way to rain on the very day the Russian Prime Minister arrived.
Originally grain interventions for this agricultural year (the year started on July 1, 2009) were to begin on August 1. However, with grain prices stable, the Government has postponed purchases. Grain intervention will begin if necessary, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said yesterday. In the opinion of grain market analysts, only the Central Black Soil Region may need Government help this year. Russia started buying grain from farmers for the intervention fund in 2002 and has increased purchases every year since. In the 2007/08 farming season it bought 1.45 million tons worth 7 billion roubles, and in 2008/09, 9.6 million tons worth 46 billion roubles.
After getting his adrenaline going with some extreme sports on Lake Baikal (specifically, submersion all the way to the bottom of the lake), Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sought more adventure in the wild mountains of Tyva. He was so impressed by its breathtaking landscapes when he first visited the area two years ago that he came back again last year, and then for a third visit this time around. He spent Sunday evening and all of Monday in the mountains.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday spearheaded the battle against the drought which is expected to cut Russia’s grain harvest this year by 11% against the target. He ordered 100 billion roubles in government credit for the regions to deal with the aftermath of the drought, which is only slightly less than the total credit issued by Rosselkhozbank for the 2009 farm season. The money will not reach the regions until September, but, as an advance payment, Vladimir Putin brought the long-awaited rain to the fields in Orenburg Region for the first time in weeks.
Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister.
The Prime Minister took a one-day holiday and spent it in Tuva in a tent town on the banks of the Khemchik River. He went down the river in an inflatable boat, negotiated several rapids and met with Andrei Subbotin, senior researcher at the Alexei Severtsov Institute of Ecology and Evolution of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who is working on a programme initiated by Mr Putin in 2007 to research and protect the snow leopard.
It seems that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has started a new trend among his subordinates – visiting the Perekryostok supermarket on Osenny Boulevard. In June, in the middle of a meeting on retail trade law, Mr Putin and his First Deputy Prime Minister Viktor Zubkov got in their cars and went to see for themselves what retail mark-ups were really like. The mark-ups turned out to be rather large. Perekryostok would not reduce prices and turned the visit into an advertising campaign. A number of different kinds of merchandise now bear the sign “The Premier’s mark-up” – less
Speaking about psychological changes in Dmitry Medvedev in the first year of his presidency one should bear in mind that as a mature man in his forties he cannot change drastically. Changes are taking place, but they do not make Medvedev a different person from what he was a year ago.
Thank God, we have left behind us all the anniversary celebrations, the first anniversary of the presidential election, inauguration, the first anniversary of the new Prime Minister in office with all the fanfare and praise. At the end of the day, we are interested in only one thing: whether the direction and mode of our progress has become any clearer.
Industrial output in April dropped by 8.1% compared with March, but at least unemployment is not growing as fast. The latest statistics were presented to the Prime Minister at the Cabinet meeting yesterday. But Vladimir Putin looked further ahead. The question that engaged his mind was how the country would develop in the future. It was decided that development would be driven by small business and new technologies.
Following Boris Gryzlov, Vladimir Putin will visit Sukhumi.
Prime Minister Putin: I believe that five ice arenas on the Black Sea coast are too many.
It has been a year since Dmitry Medvedev assumed the office of President and Vladimir Putin that of Prime Minister. Time puts everything in its place, and many things have become clearer during the year of dual power.
Talks with the Obama Administration begin in Moscow.
Kommersant has learned that the company Ernst & Young has evaluated the 28% stake in Moscow City Telephone Network (MGTS) belonging to Svyazinvest at more than 12 billion roubles. Earlier, the principal owner of AFK Sistema, Vladimir Yevtushenkov, told Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that he was ready to give back to the state 25% plus one share in Svyazinvest (23.7 billion roubles) in exchange for a write-off of its debt to Sberbank (26 billion roubles) and a share of the state holding in MGTS (at present Sistema owns 66% of voting shares).
The Government Sustained Economy Commission headed by First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov has approved the preparation of amendments to legislation that supports budget settlements under state order with enterprises through special accounts. The proposals on introducing a special procedure for disbursing budget allocations for these purposes have been developed on a directive of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and the specific measures were developed by the Finance Ministry.
The State Duma last week admitted for consideration a bill proposed by the President whereby the Chairman of the Constitutional Court would be nominated by the head of state and confirmed by the Federation Council. If the amendment is adopted, Russia will lose its last government body that is not part of the vertical power structure.
Russia is full of surprises. Nowhere else have well-educated members of the Young Communist League grown rich as quickly by consistently applying capitalist methods of robbery. And nowhere else have these new capitalists grown poor again because of capitalism.
The Kremlin has long been urging the need to drop the Cold War clichés with regard to Russia. Our commentator IGOR FEDYUKIN has discovered in the book by American analyst Jeffrey Mankoff practical tips for Barack Obama on how to successfully “reset” the relations with Russia.
Russia and Europe are engaged in a war of nerves, each lobbying for their own massive gas pipeline projects: South Stream and Nabucco. Nevertheless, however protracted and costly this war may be, Russia is almost certain to lose its status as an energy superpower.
The day after meeting with Silvio Berlusconi Vladimir Putin received Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan at his Riviera residence in Sochi. The Russian Prime Minister drove to the meeting at the wheel of his own Niva, bought about a month earlier: license number 001, 270 kilometres. The car, in a camouflage paint scheme (including the interior) was delivered from Togliatti to Sochi on the same day.
Before meeting Russian President Medvedev in Moscow, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi spent some time with his counterpart and friend Vladimir Putin in Sochi. Vladimir Putin personally met with Berlusconi at the airport and, taking to the wheel of his Mercedes, drove him to the hotel Radisson Lazurnaya, where the Prime Ministers held talks and witnessed the signing of several documents related to the implementation of the South Stream project.
The 54th Eurovision Contest in Russia has ended; the 55th will be hosted by Oslo, Norway.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received his Turkish counterpart Recep Erdogan at his Riviera residence in Sochi last Saturday. The Russian Prime Minister arrived at the venue of the talks driving his recently acquired Russian-made Niva.
Gazprom will double the capacity of the South Stream pipeline and consider building a second line of Blue Stream.
Vladimir Putin flew into Sochi from Mongolia on Friday night. Having caught up with his sleep to the sound of the falling rain (there have been torrential downpours in Sochi), the Prime Minister met with the President of Abkhazia, Sergei Bagapsh.
Today Russia finally has an answer to the European Union’s plans for the Nabucco gas pipeline. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is meeting with his Italian counterpart Silvio Berlusconi, in Sochi, where they will issue a joint announcement on the South Stream gas pipeline project. In addition, Gazprom is signing a corresponding agreement with Greece’s DESFA, Bulgaria’s Bulgarian Energy Holding, and Serbia’s Srbijagas. However, even Silvio Berlusconi’s purely symbolic participation in this event is something for which Russian business will have to pay dearly.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the President of the Republic of Abkhazia Sergei Bagapsh, met at Putin’s Sochi residence Riviera, where the President of Abkhazia said he was offered a loan of no less than one billion roubles. Kommersant’s special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov was surprised that the President of Abkhazia does not consider this a significant sum of money for either himself or Vladimir Putin.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with Sergei Bagapsh, the President of Abkhazia, at his Sochi residence Riviera. After the meeting, during which the two leaders discussed “mutually beneficial projects”, such as energy, railways, the sea shelf, and tourism, Mr Bagapsh told journalists that Abkhazia would get a loan of between 1 and 1.5 billion roubles. Moreover, he said that Abkhazia would closely follow developments regarding Georgia’s progress in joining NATO.
On Thursday the International Olympic Committee’s coordinating commission concluded their inspection of Sochi by dining with Vladimir Putin. In the two days that the IOC experts spent in the city that is to host the 2014 winter Olympics they saw, as Jean-Claude Killy said, “mind-blowing presentations and animated films” as well as the construction of the port and the Roza Khutor ski resort. The inspectors’ verdict? Sochi’s preparations for 2014 are on schedule.
Having concluded his visit to Mongolia, the Prime Minister reviewed his year in power at the Government House.
Vladimir Putin himself admits that he has got to grips with his prime ministerial duties.
The venue of the meeting between Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the winners of the 4th Winter Spartakiad of Russian school students was Olympic Reserve School No.2 on Malaya Filevskaya Street.
Alexander Budberg’s article “Jamming-Proof” (MK, May 6) timed for the anniversary of Dmitry Medvedev’s inauguration had every chance of providing a model of a jubilee article. Alas, it was not.
The Russian Prime Minister has completed his three-day trip to Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Tokyo and Ulan-Bator.
On the eve of the crisis Russian foreign policy changed dramatically. The phrase “Russia has got up from its knees” lost any shade of irony and became an unassailable truth. Moscow was demonstrating that it was ready to spend any amount of money to look like a superpower. The crisis had a cooling effect, but it turned out that the Russian Government was prepared to save on anything but not on foreign policy ambitions.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Mongolia yesterday. During the visit a $7 billion contract to develop Mongolian railways was signed. However, as he confided to our special correspondent, ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, he would have preferred to return to Russia not by train or even by plane, but riding a horse or a camel across Altai and Kalmykia.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a working visit to Mongolia yesterday. In Ulan-Bator he had talks with all the country’s key leaders, visited an exhibition of agricultural machinery and, bumping in the street into Russian explorer Fyodor Konyukhov, immediately dispatched him on another expedition in the company of horses and camels, promising to join him later.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spent the whole of yesterday in Mongolia. Ulan Bator gave him a royal welcome. The 15-km road from the airport to the state palace was lined with Mongolian soldiers.
Vladimir Putin invites Japanese businessmen to invest in Russian economy.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin offered Japan to cooperate more closely in oil and gas projects. Specifically, Japanese companies will be able to participate in the construction of a liquefied natural gas (LNG) plant and a gas chemical facility in the Primorye Territory.
What will follow the final ban on importing right-hand drive cars?
Russian businessmen arrested in Spain on charges of operating a criminal organisation have connections with Russian government officials, politicians, heads of state-owned companies and friends of Vladimir Putin.
During Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s visit to Japan yesterday, the two countries signed an agreement on the peaceful use of nuclear energy, as well as other bilateral agreements. These agreements pave the way for the exchange of Russian energy resources for the latest Japanese technologies, and for the further development of bilateral trade. The political nature of the discussions demonstrated that Mr Putin is making the broadest possible use of the 2008 provision extending the Prime Minister’s authority in implementing Russia’s foreign policy.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin responded to Japan’s proposal to give half of the islands with neither a “yes” nor a “no”.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hopes to develop Sochi and the Russian Far East with the help of Japanese technologies.
Yesterday, during a working visit in Tokyo, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin took part in a dozen meetings. Throughout the visit, he tried to deal exclusively with the economic issues within his competence, but on a couple of occasions he could not help but go beyond. This was the case primarily because the Japanese couldn’t pretend the whole time that there are issues in relations with Russia, which worry them more than the territorial issue. However, this did not prevent Putin from consolidating bilateral economic cooperation by signing an important agreement in the nuclear energy field, and making a contribution to humanitarian contacts by presenting his book about Judo to the Japanese public. But a bad aftertaste lingered…
The visit by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Japan was devoted to the development of bilateral economic cooperation, but avoiding the territorial issue over the South Kuril Islands is practically impossible at any bilateral summit. Moscow is convinced that territorial issues are no obstacle to economic cooperation, whereas Tokyo warns that this is an impediment, and the problems must be resolved as soon as possible. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso reminded Putin about Japan’s position. “If we can remove this bone of contention, we will build relations of true partnership,” Aso declared.
AFK Sistema’s owner Vladimir Yevtushenkov offered Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to transfer to the Government 25% plus one share of Svyazinvest in exchange for writing off a Sistema affiliate’s 26-billion roubles debt to Sberbank and a controlling stake in MGTS.
The Prime Minister has inspected the leading enterprises in the Far East. After watching a Russia-Canada hockey match, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin set off for the East: he will spend the whole of today in Japan, will be in Mongolia tomorrow, and he stopped over in Komsomolsk-on-Amur yesterday.
The Government has decided to admit private foreign investors to the Russian civil shipbuilding industry. A leading Singaporean shipyard is ready to invest up to $5 billion in the building of a new shipyard in the Far East, the president of the United Shipbuilding Corporation, Vladimir Pakhomov, announced to a conference on the development of the Far Eastern shipbuilding industry, which was held in Komsomolsk-on-Amur and was chaired by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
