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
The Government convened a session yesterday. The first to arrive at the meeting was the Chief Sanitary Inspector, Gennady Onishchenko, who has been featured in the news recently in connection with the swine flu epidemic in Mexico. He watched the arriving ministers with a professional air. Upon his arrival in the hall, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who recently returned from the United States, received an especially long gaze.
Yevgeny Primakov became Prime Minister at the height of the 1998 crisis. Although he had inherited mainly huge debts, even the acerbic liberal Andrei Illarionov admitted that “the economic policy pursued in that period was the best in several decades”. The snags set by the current crisis and how soon Russia will emerge from the recession were some of the subjects we discussed with the President of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Academician Yevgeny Primakov. He was interviewed for Izvestia by Marina Zavada and Yury Kulikov.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Governmental Budget Commission yesterday, at which the Government’s tax initiatives were discussed.
Donatas Banionis is one of the greatest stars in the Soviet film industry. We will always remember Mr Banionis as Vaitkus in “Nobody Wanted to Die”, Ladeinikov in “Off Season”, Kelvin in “Solaris”, Goya in Conrad Wolf’s film “Goya or the Hard Path to Knowledge”, Gabriel Conroy in the Western “Armed and Very Dangerous” and finally Kletchaty in “The Adventures of Prince Florizel”.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko promised to raise the issue of cutting Ukraine’s purchases of gas from Russia during her working visit to Moscow on April 29 to attend a meeting of the Economic Cooperation Committee of the Russian-Ukrainian Intergovernmental Commission. “We will discuss cuts in natural gas consumption by Ukraine,” Ms Tymoshenko told journalists yesterday.
Giving up the plan to increase insurance contributions to 34% starting in 2010 will cost the budget more than 1 trillion roubles, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin announced yesterday.
Cuts in the refinance rate and new initiatives aimed at supporting banks will not rapidly revive the system of lending to the non-financial sectors. But they will have a big psychological effect, as the authorities use them to signal their support of business now that the decline in production has stopped.
The Ministry of Economic Development is forever asking the Finance Ministry to give small business a break. Four years ago German Gref wrote to Alexei Kudrin asking him to not require small enterprises, which pay tax on imputed income, to use cash registers. Mr Gref asked, logically, why they need cash machines which register their revenue if the tax assessment is known in advance. Businessmen joked at the time that Mr Gref should be writing to the FSB and not to the Finance Minister.
Lawmakers want guarantees for the Government’s anti-crisis plan.
The Belarusian President is confident his country can deal with increasing foreign debt.
The main confirmation of a consumer’s rights, the receipt, will be discarded. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised small business that the requirement to use cash registers would be eliminated. The respective draft law will be introduced by July 1. MK examined how consumers would protect their rights without receipts.
According to the latest VTsIOM (Russian Public Opinion Research Centre) poll, only 13% of respondents expect that Government measures will result in a quick, positive effect, while 32% of respondents hope that things will change for the better in the medium term. This means that less than 45% of the population thinks positively of the Government’s anti-crisis plan. Still, the number of those strongly critical of the authorities is not high - only 8%. Even fewer are calling for the Government’s resignation – 1%. The rest have either no hopes or opinion.
The recent National Forum on Small and Medium Businesses has set some important precedents. For the first time it was attended by the country’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who promised unprecedented measures of support, beginning with tax breaks and access to government tenders and ending with the promise to pull down administrative barriers.
The United States says it doubts the feasibility of the South Stream project.
Most Russians perceive the Chechen President as a boor. But for the Chechens Mr Kadyrov is a prophet and a tribune, embodying the hopes of a long-suffering people. A devout Muslim, he fits in well within the narrow framework of the values that prevail in that republic. He prays daily in the new mosque, he does not drink or smoke. He is thought to be a guarantor of peace for which a million people yearn after two bloody wars for independence. He is the one who will restore the devastated country, the Chechens believe.
The court has decreed the release of former Yukos lawyer Svetlana Bakhmina. President Medvedev has met with human rights activists. The liberal-minded public is talking of a new thaw. But author and television presenter Andrei Maximov thinks a thaw should come from within you, not outside of you.
What was so much argued for by MPs, businessmen, governors, workers, farmers, and others has finally become reality – the Bank of Russia reduced the refinancing rate. As of last week, the rate was 12.5%. Public pressure only partially contributed to the decision. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had the final say on the issue. He sent the head of the Central Bank a subtle, but compelling message to act.
In late March, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised 25 billion roubles to automotive giant AvtoVAZ. The state-owned Russian Technology Corporation will receive the total sum from the federal budget and will issue it to AvtoVAZ in the form of a one-year interest-free loan.
Vladimir Putin criticises Government officials for desultory lawmaking.
The Russian delegation to Sofia will be led by Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko.
Entrepreneurs will enjoy preferential loans and be inspected less often.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced government-approved measures to support small and medium enterprises. The Government has approved tax breaks for SMEs, including a doubling (to 60 million roubles) of the annual turnover that makes an enterprise eligible for a simplified taxation scheme. More serious breaks have been turned down, and by 2012 the Government will be ready to consider lifting all the tax breaks.
President Dmitry Medvedev has ordered an audit of supervisory bodies so that their corrupt officials who try to fleece small businesses could be slapped on the wrists. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday attended the national forum on the development of small and medium-sized business and promised tax breaks to its participants.
When will government assistance to banks reach the real sector at acceptable rates? When will they curb the appetites of top managers who enjoy government support and pay themselves hundreds of millions in bonuses? Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made his views perfectly clear at yesterday’s meeting devoted to support of the banking system.
German company Qimonda AG, one of the world’s leading memory chip producers which is now going through a bankruptcy procedure, may be bought by a Russian investor, it was announced yesterday. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin expressed interest in the company during talks with the Prime Minister of Saxony, Stanislaw Tillich. The latter quoted the Russian Prime Minister as saying that he was going to order a “quick and thorough check” of the opportunities that Russian investors have with regard to Qimonda, Reuters reports.
Confidence in the national currency has been restored, the rouble has steadied and inflation has slowed down, he said. “Inflation may run at 1.1 to 1.2% in April, according to the Ministry of Economic Development forecasts.
A delegation from Saxony will visit Kaluga Region and Tatarstan.
The Lipetsk ice cream factory gives United Russia a scare.
The Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday cancelled his earlier planned visit to Sofia where he was to attend the summit Natural Gas for Europe: Security and Partnership. Also yesterday, ahead of the gas forum, the Kremlin unveiled Russia’s proposals on a “new legal framework of international cooperation in the energy sphere”. This may suggest that Russia does not expect anything useful to emerge from the meeting of gas suppliers and consumers: it has recently quarreled with both.
The Finnish President Tarja Halonen interviewed by Rossiiskaya Gazeta.
Advertising revenues across the various media have dropped by 20-34% and “advertising volume looks set to decline,” the Minister of Telecommunications and Mass Media, Igor Shchegolev said during a meeting with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday.
Dmitri, the son of the State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov and the niece of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin , Vera, have launched vigorous political activities in St Petersburg, “the city that has raised two presidents”. They intend to create a youth parliament and government, to head up these organisations and to “act as liaisons between young people and the authorities.” Izvestia has been learning more about out how this initiative arose. Dmitri Gryzlov and Vera Putina have been spending a lot of time together recently thanks to their joint activities. After appearing together on local cable television they dropped by at a café to exchange their impressions. Contacting Vera Putina turned out to be easy: we called Dima Gryzlov and he passed the phone to her.
VSMPO-Avisma has signed a $4 billion contract with the European aircraft builder.
Whatever may happen to the economy the new city of Sochi, Vladimir Putin’s city, will be built on schedule.
Over the past week, Dmitry Medvedev has demonstrated that he is capable of making broad gestures.
Unlike his predecessors who, as soon as they moved into the Kremlin, started to fill it with their own people, Dmitry Medvedev is still a member of the “Putin team”. That is one more argument in favour of the claim that the “Putin era” still lies ahead, thinks Olga Kryshtanovskaya, PhD in Sociology, the head of the RAS Sociology Institute’s sector for the study of the elite.
Twenty years ago Boris Yeltsin, a party functionary who had fallen from grace, made his second bid for power. In 1989 he became People’s Deputy of the USSR, in 1990 the head of Parliament of the RSFSR and in 1991 the President of Russia. It was only later that became “Tsar Boris”…
The members of Boris Yeltsin’s entourage have fared differently after “Grandfather’s” demise: some withdrew into the shadows, some became integrated into the Putin-Medvedev team. “Some are gone and some are far away”.
It will soon be a year since Dmitry Medvedev became President. Those who remember Mikhail Gorbachev’s first year as the Communist Party General Secretary would agree that history repeats itself. Mr Gorbachev looked more liberal than his predecessors. There were hopes for a “thaw”. However, everybody was sure that Gorbachev was beholden to the Kremlin octogenarians. Gorbachev’s first year fell on the first year of plummeting oil prices and he realised that he could not afford a confrontation with the West. Like today, a “reset” of relations with America took place.
Easter service was celebrated at the Christ the Savoir Cathedral on Sunday night.
Boris Gryzlov’s son and Vladimir Putin’s niece will run youth affairs in St Petersburg.
As of March 1 the Tver Carriage Plant (TVZ), which employs a workforce of 10,000, has been shifted to a three-day week, and workers’ wages have been cut making it a problem for them to pay back their credits. On Wednesday the Prime Minister came to the rescue of the workers and the people in the region. “I talked with the head of Sberbank on my way here. He will give instructions to the Tver branch to carry out a total restructuring. He will do it today,” Mr Putin promised.
Russians may soon have a female Prime Minister Putin, though not of the Russian Federation, but of the youth government of St Petersburg. She is not only the Russian Prime Minister’s namesake, but also Vladimir Putin’s niece. MK has contacted Vera Putina, and asked her about the plans of the youth government of St Petersburg, and whether she has ever sought the advice of her famous uncle.
Interview with Rainer Riess, managing director of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.
Last week Prime Minister Putin delivered his annual report to the Duma and the deputies asked him questions.
Presenting the Government’s report to the State Duma last week Vladimir Putin confirmed the Government’s commitment to the flat income tax rate introduced in Russia in 2001. “On the face of it, of course, this is not very fair,” he admitted, but he chose not to try to convince the deputies that it was fair “on closer inspection.” The Prime Minister rolled out two arguments. First, he noted “when we introduced the flat scale, tax revenue increased by 12 times in eight years.” Second, he mentioned abuses and admitted that “we do not administer this properly: most probably… if we go back to the differentiated rate… no social justice will result”.
The state-controlled Sverbank may acquire a “golden share” in Yandex, the largest search system in the Russian Internet, two sources in the Russian government-controlled banks told Vedomosti.
The Prime Minister, while meeting the employees of a Tver factory, reassured them that the financial crisis would not last as long as the Finance Minister predicts.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the Tver Railway Carriage Factory yesterday, and gave it financial assistance. In the opinion of Kommersant’s special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, the employees of the factory came away from the meeting with the Prime Minister with one pervading feeling: no matter how much the Government gives out during the financial crisis, it must give out still more.
Maurice Druon, author, Resistance fighter, former Culture Minister (1973-1974), one of 40 “perpetual” French academics (1966), and recipient of the Legion of Honour Grand Cross, died in his Paris home on April 14. He would have been 91 in ten days’ time. In Russia, the author of the seven-volume “The Accursed Kings” (1955-1977) was less well known but better loved than in his own country.
