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
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin began a three-day working tour of the Far East (in and outside Russia). He visited Komsomolsk-on-Amur on Monday, will spend today in Tokyo and tomorrow in Ulan-Bator. In Komsomolsk-on-Amur the Prime Minister focused on ship-building and the new Russian plane Sukhoi Superjet-100.
On the eve of his visit to Japan, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin granted an interview to Japanese journalists. He was asked about the Kuril Islands, import duties on used cars, and his relations with President Dmitry Medvedev.
A surprise visit by Vladimir Putin’s motorcade after May 9th’s Victory Parade caused a commotion behind the scenes at the Olimpiisky Complex. Within half an hour, an urgent press release from the Azeri delegation announcing that the Russian Prime Minister had attended one of the Aisel and Arash duet’s rehearsals had landed in front of all the computers at the press centre and on all the chairs in the press conference room.
The Russian Prime Minister has begun his two-day visit to Japan. He is to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, members of the business community, and politicians. Ten agreements are expected to emerge from the visit, most notably concerning cooperation between banks, as well as a memorandum on the construction of the Nizhnebureiskaya Hydroelectric Power Plant and the Far Eastern wind farm on Russky Island.
After arriving at Komsomolsk-on-Amur yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin inspected at the Sukhoi Holding Company’s flagship plant, which will produce the Superjet-100 plane, and promised to provide more money to increase the authorised capital of the Russian-Italian joint venture and speed up the plane’s deployment. During a conference, at which the fate of the shipbuilding industry in the Far East was discussed, he promised more money to the most underdeveloped enterprise in the sector, the Amur Shipbuilding Plant, and stunned everyone by announcing that the plant would be deprivatised, because, as he said, its current owners could not manage it properly. Our special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV reports on the details from Komsomolsk-on-Amur.
Foreigners arriving in Russia by ferry will be allowed to stay in Russia for 72 hours without a visa.
The Russian Government does not intend to lift the restrictions on the import of foreign cars, and regards the support of producers and not dealers as a priority, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in an interview with the Japanese media ahead of his visit to Japan. The new custom duties on the import of foreign cars to Russia came into force as of January 12, 2009 in accordance with Government resolutions. RIA Novosti
Not all the countries that took part in the energy summit signed its declaration.
On May 9, Victory Day, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Olimpiisky Sports Complex, where preparation for the Eurovision song contest was in full swing. Kommersant’s ANDREI KOLESNIKOV was following the Prime Minister as he checked the preparations for the contest.
Sberbank received yet another bad asset – Amur Shipbuilding Plant (ASP). The bank will transfer the company to the state owned United Shipbuilding Corporation (USC) and allocate additional $400 million to restructure the facility.
I have always believed that a double-headed vertical power structure is the best of all possible options for Russia, if only because this model lends a new quality to political life.
What does the “Medvedev-Putin tandem” mean? Who of them is the boss? In general, what do you think about these two people?” We have asked students in grades nine to eleven at a Moscow school these questions.
The political tandem is a year old: Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as President and Vladimir Putin became the head of Government in May of last year. Ever since then, the future of the tandem has been a key issue. Some believe that it is about to collapse, some think that such a collapse could never happen…
Looking back on President Medvedev’s and Prime Minister Putin’s first year at their respective jobs, Deputy Speaker of the State Duma Oleg Morozov said on Tuesday: “This tandem works, and it is quite a unique phenomenon in politics. The former President, an extremely popular politician, has agreed to become the head of the executive branch under a new President, and thus to assume responsibility for the country not during the best of times, but during a crisis”.
Dmitry Medvedev assumed his presidential duties a year ago. Vlast has asked its readers to reflect on his first year as President.
Vladimir Putin will mark his first year since becoming Russia’s Prime Minister, for the second time. For any other politician a step down the official career ladder would have meant a corresponding loss in power. But the past year has shown that in today’s Russia Putin is more than his job. Putin the Premier wields as much influence as Putin the President. However, the number of problems facing him has increased many times.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the medal winners of the national Spartakiad for school students yesterday. He promised to preserve the CSKA sports club and answered the question about the relative difficulty of being President of Russia versus being the Prime Minister. With the details of the visit to the Olympic Reserve School is our correspondent ANDRE KOLESNIKOV.
Japan will no longer torment the Russian Prime Minister with talk of the Southern Kuriles.
With five years to go to the Sochi Winter Olympics this is an auspicious time to assess our potential. The country’s leaders regularly inspect the progress of the Olympic infrastructure construction. However, it is still unknown who will represent Russia at the 2014 Olympics.
It was a year ago today that Dmitry Medvedev came into “possession” of three regalia of presidential power – a special copy of the Constitution, the presidential banner, and the presidential badge. These seemingly ordinary and unshakeable symbols appear to have interesting stories behind them: the closest cousin of the presidential banner – the state flag – was first hoisted over the Kremlin upside down, while the Constitution, it now emerges, is no longer an official symbol of the head of state. On the other hand, Mr Medvedev has made the Internet and latest technology a new kind of presidential symbol.
On May 7 of last year, Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as President of Russia. On the next day, May 8, Vladimir Putin was confirmed as Prime Minister. How has the country lived through this year under a two-man tandem? What difficulties did the tandem face? How is it taking the country out of the crisis? What challenges will it have to meet in the near future?
During his first presidential year, Russia’s third President tried to address two problems: to remain true to the course set out by Russia’s second President, Vladimir Putin, and to cultivate his own political style. So far, Mr Medvedev is succeeding on both tracks.
It has become a tradition in Russia: a person elevated to the highest post in the country changes beyond recognition. Vladimir Putin was two different persons at the start and finish of his presidency. Dmitry Medvedev has altered both as a personality and as an executive in the 12 months since his inauguration. To obtain a more nuanced picture of these changes, Izvestia has invited political psychologists to comment on the country’s two leaders.
Today marks a year since Dmitry Medvedev was inaugurated as President. Yet despite all this time he was unable to draw clear dividing lines between his powers and those of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
The Prime Minister has discussed sports and space industry plans for the next decade.
A source close to the Government of the Irkutsk Region says that the regional authorities are negotiating the sale of East Siberian Gas Company (VSGK) to Rosneft for 3 billion roubles.
Oleg Morozov, First Deputy Speaker of the State Duma:
“Is it all that important? However, if Russia hosts the championship, Putin will be given the credit. It is not proper to ask who will be President in 2018. Mr Medvedev and Mr Putin will themselves decide who will be fit to be the President”.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is determined to do everything to ensure that the 2018 World Football Championship is awarded to Russia. On Tuesday Mr Putin met with the Minister of Sport and Tourism, Vitaly Mutko, setting him a very concrete task: “Prepare an application for Russia to host the 2018 World Football Championship”.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has supported Russia’s bid to host the World Football Championship in 2018. Government officials have yet to estimate what the event would cost. Experts are sure it will cost more than the Sochi Olympics.
The first result of the anti-crisis programme is that President Dmitry Medvedev has admitted that the injection of 175 billion roubles of budget money into the stock market last autumn had been a mistake and brought no results. It is good that the country’s leader is so honest. But the ease with which mistakes costing hundreds of billions of roubles are made is alarming. One has the impression that under the pretext of combating the crisis officials take decisions easily in the hope that failures would be attributed to the crisis.
Registered unemployment dropped for the first time since monitoring began (in October 2008) in the last week of April by 0.7% to 2,268,000, a spokesman for the Ministry of Healthcare and Social Development announced yesterday. Just last week Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the weekly growth of unemployment had slowed down from 9% in January-February to 1.6% in March-April.
The idea of introducing a unified tax on real estate instead of the current property and land taxes can only be described as new by a stretch. This keeps cropping up every time bureaucrats are faced with the question of how to replenish local and regional budgets. The idea has been revived by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who proposed introducing it as early as 2010, but at differentiated rates so that the owners of expensive “investment” real estate should pay more and the owners of more modest accommodation get some preferential treatment.
Teachers from all over Russia have presented a 13-point Programme of Anti-Crisis Measures for 2009 (ACM-13. 9) to the Government. The financial crisis is no excuse for saving on education, but the teachers decided it can certainly justify putting some of the more unpleasant reforms on hold.
This year the government allocated money for retraining of 216,000 unemployed workers.
The approval ratings of Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin dropped to a record low over the past year, according to an opinion poll conducted by Levada Centre from April 24th to April 27th. Still, they enjoy the support of the majority of Russians: 68% of respondents approve the President and 76% of the Prime Minister.
According to the Interior Ministry, about 30,000 people participated in May Day demonstrations and rallies in Moscow, which is less than City Hall had expected. Government authorities had approved 32 applications for demonstrations from pro- and anti-government supporters, and had expected up to 70,000 people to assemble. Demonstrators in one part of the city chanted “The Putin Plan is a plan for victory” while those in another part called for taking power from the Prime Minister’s Government.
The President has decided to personally present his budget proposal to the Federal Assembly at a meeting of the Government Presidium. Dmitry Medvedev did not reveal the details of the upcoming proposal, but the most important member of the audience, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has already unveiled some details during his visit to the Astrakhan Region last week.
Dmitry Medvedev has rearranged the Far Eastern administration and appointed the Governor of the Khabarovsk Territory as his Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District, replacing Oleg Safonov, who has been transferred “to another job.” Mr Medvedev’s candidate for Governor is Viacheslav Shport, a former State Duma deputy and regional industry minister.
“The atmosphere was fraternal, they almost embraced each other.” This was how the Russian Ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, described the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko, the first after the January “gas war.” Viktor Chernomyrdin would not say this without reason. Not that Moscow easily forgave Kiev for signing the “Brussels accord” with the EU, an agreement that excluded Russia from the plan to modernise the Ukrainian gas transportation system. Yet the two countries are bound together. In other words, the main supplier of gas to Europe and the main transit country have no option but to make peace and come to terms. The question is what sort of terms. This mutual dependence is the secret of Moscow’s new “love formula” with Kiev that has let it down more than once.
After the first of May, businessmen will get a hiatus from unscheduled inspections by police, fire officials, sanitary and medical officers and consumer rights agencies. As of May 1st, such visits must be agreed upon with the local prosecutor’s office and can occur only after official authorisation.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has resurrected the idea of a single tax on real estate, which may help municipal governments financially through the financial crisis and reduce prices for high-end housing.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said in Moscow yesterday that Ukraine is in favour of Russia taking part in the modernisation of the Ukrainian Gas Transportation System (GTS) despite the fact that it runs counter to Ukraine’s Brussels agreement with the EU. However, as Kommersant’s ANDREI KOLESNIKOV observed at first hand, these words cut little ice with Vladimir Putin who seemed to be disappointed with this Ukrainian negotiator like with all the previous ones.
Ukraine offers Russia to modernise its gas transportation system together.
Vladimir Putin and Yulia Tymoshenko have discussed modernisation of the gas transportation system.
Gazprom lifts sanctions it imposed on Kiev for failing to buy all the contracted gas in exchange for inviting Moscow to take part in Ukraine’s gas transportation system.
The Central Election Commission has turned a blind eye on the fact that the Sverdlovsk Region Governor and the Mayor of Yekaterinburg have waived their parliamentary mandates. This will enable the two vote-getters (or “locomotives”) to keep their places on the bench of stand-by candidates.
The proposal is contained in the Basic Guidelines for Customs Tariff Policy (Vedomosti has a copy of it) which the Budget Commission considered on Monday under Prime Minister Putin’s chairmanship. “The Guidelines have been approved and will be submitted to the Government meeting in May,” says a Government official.
The Government has come up with a new arrangement for anti-crisis policy: pilot projects for which the ministers will be personally responsible. The Russian Government discussed the first such project, Modernisation of the Pension System, at its meeting yesterday.
Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev arrived in Moscow to discuss gas. He will meet with Vladimir Putin today.
