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 visited Europe’s biggest railway carriage factory yesterday, located in the city of Tver. In 1942 the plant repaired tanks for the Kalinin Front. The enterprise is now experiencing hard times because the Russian Railways Company has reduced orders for carriages (from about a thousand in 2008 to almost half that number today). Employees have been put on a three-day workweek, their wages have dropped, and before long about 20% of the workforce will be laid off.
Extracts from Maurice Druon’s exclusive interview to Izvestia’s Paris correspondent Yuri Kovalenko.
At a meeting with the employees of the Tver Railway Carriage Plant (TVZ), Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to restructure all of the plant’s loans. “On the way to this meeting I spoke with the head of Sberbank. Soon he will issue instructions to the Tver branch to fully restructure your loan. He will do this today”, said Mr Putin, noting that the directive would cover consumer and mortgage loans taken out by people in the Tver Region, including the plant’s employees.
The former Georgian leader says resignation may be the crucial point in a politician’s career.
“Everybody knows that our land begins with the Kremlin”. It is almost a year since that line from a popular verset became irrelevant for Russian politics. Over the past months people have got used to the idea that while the President was officially the country’s leader real power resided in the Prime Minister’s office. How did the Russian state mechanism, geared to a single boss, react to such a “crumbling of foundations”? How is the country being run on a day-to-day basis? One can find an answer by taking a closer look at the bureaucrats who are sitting inside the Kremlin walls.
Developing infrastructure projects in a difficult economic situation is a sure way out of the crisis. This is an axiom. Prime Minister Putin told a meeting on the development of transport infrastructure in 2009, held in St Petersburg yesterday, that the Government would increase investments in the transport infrastructure by 100 billion roubles (to 550 billion roubles) compared with 2008.
During the past twenty years Europe has travelled a path from Gorbachev-mania to Putin-phobia. These were the opening words at the 20th Berlin Conference of the German economic and financial newspaper Handelsblatt uttered by the noted journalist Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, who had for many years worked as German television’s Channel 1 correspondent in Moscow.
Opening yesterday’s Government Presidium meeting Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned that it had some “complicated and unpleasant issues” to discuss. The issues included housing and utilities and air transport.
At the end of March Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited the AvtoVAZ car plant and promised it government support in the amount of $3 billion. It was a gesture of unheard-of largesse. When Vladimir Putin was planning his visit to Togliatti he is said to have intended to shell out just 10 billion roubles, and then not in hard cash but in state guarantees of AvtoVAZ future loans (for an enterprise that reports losses obtaining loans in times of crisis is highly problematic). However, the Prime Minister was given a hearty welcome, he liked everything he saw and as an all-powerful man he promised more.
People are not interested to know what Government officials state in their income declarations, but they approve the idea of public disclosure.
An interesting incident happened during Prime Minister Putin’s recent meeting with the representatives of political and non-governmental organisations. The secretary of the Public Chamber, Mr Velikhov, who was one of the first to speak, told the Prime Minister about a recent resolution of the Public Chamber’s plenary session on the topic “The National Economic Strategy in the Context of the World Crisis”. The resolution stressed the importance, in time of crisis, of understanding that the state is an institution of national solidarity. Before giving the floor to the next speaker, Mr Putin commented on Mr Velikhov’s reference to the “need to consolidate society in the face of the threatening crisis today”.
“Toppled regime”: an official end to the counterterrorist operation in Chechnya.
Last Thursday as tens of thousands of protesters on Prospekt Rustaveli were chanting “Misha, Go!”, Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili was explaining to Newsweek’s Anna Nemtsova that the opposition in Georgia had no chance and that he had never personally insulted Vladimir Putin.
Our correspondent has studied the sales ratings of political literature at three major Moscow bookshops (the Moscow Book House, Biblio-Globus and Moskva) to find out that the vast majority of Russian political bestsellers explain to the public who our country’s foes are and why.
Both Moscow and Baghdad have welcomed the visit to Russia by an Iraqi delegation led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, which ended on Saturday. The parties have agreed to promote cooperation in the power and oil industries and in the military field. Nezavisimaya Gazeta has learned that Baghdad is shortly to send a team of experts to Russia to choose the model of helicopter that Iraq would buy.
Last weekend saw protest actions by motorists against the official policy on the import and use of second-hand foreign-made cars. Remembering it was Cosmonauts Day, the protestors recommended President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin going into outer space. The focus of motorists’ protests was again Vladivostok where the participants in an unsanctioned rally were detained by the police.
FRANKFURT-AM-MAIN (GERMANY)
Poverty makes one rich
During the economic downturn the backward Russian regions fall back on the values that are immune to crisis. The price of orders and medals that regional rulers are giving out is the higher the greater the region’s financial dependence on the federal budget. The extremely poor Kalmykia is 90% financed by Moscow while its President decorates foremost individuals with a White Lotus Order made of platinum and adorned with 13 diamonds and 8 rubies…
Vladimir Putin was writing a report but ended up with an address to the Duma.
Russian oil companies have a chance to return to Iraq, as became clear after the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki visited Moscow. This was the first visit to Russia by the head of the Iraqi Cabinet formed under the country’s constitution adopted in October 2005.
It is nearly ten years since the ailing Boris Yeltsin appointed Vladimir Putin as the head of the Russian Government. This coincided with the start of a spurt of the national economy which was leaving the 1998 crisis behind it and enjoyed the benefits of extraordinarily high energy prices. Although now it is Dmitry Medvedev and not Vladimir Putin who attends international summits and hobnobs with world leaders, they undoubtedly feel that Vladimir Putin is still Russia’s real leader.
By joining the international campaign against money laundering and legalisation of criminal incomes Russia did not only bolster its reputation but reduced economic crime.
The particularly principled churchgoers who worship at the Life-giving Trinity on Sparrow Hills do not want to pray to the Russian government. They are plunged into embarrassment by the portraits of Vladimir Putin and Yuri Luzhkov that hang in the cathedral’s entrance hall just beneath those of the three Patriarchs of All Russia.
Officials and experts propose even more anti-crisis innovations.
Yesterday, preliminary information from TNS Russia emerged about viewers’ response to the TV coverage of Mr Putin’s appearance at the State Duma, where the Prime Minister described the anti-crisis measures his Government has taken
The programme for the relocation to Russia of Russians living abroad, initiated by President Vladimir Putin in 2006, has practically collapsed. Only 10,000 people have moved to Russia, instead of the expected 300,000 a year. Yesterday the head of the Federal Migration Service (FMS) Konstantin Romodanovsky nonetheless announced that the programme was not on the verge of collapse, and that it was “still fully functional”. Opponents of the project think that its conditions are “only suitable for those people who need to flee or who have nowhere else to go.”
Prime Minister Putin devoted so much time to speaking about social justice as if he had a mind to become the leader of Sergei Mironov’s Just Russia party. Perversely, justice each time turned out to be an antipode of economic expediency.
A Russian-Italian Economic Forum opened in Moscow yesterday. The meeting was not cancelled in spite of the devastating earthquake that had hit Italy (the participants had arrived in Moscow before the disaster struck). Only Prime Minister Berlusconi cancelled his visit. Originally Mr Berlusconi and Mr Putin were to attend the forum together. In the event, the Russian Prime Minister came alone.
Early data published yesterday from the Bank of Russia on the structure of foreign debt show that the rate of repayment of bank and corporate loans has dropped by 40% during the first quarter of the year. The external private sector debt dropped by $28.9 billion during the first quarter of 2009 compared with $47.4 billion in the previous quarter. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin declared the day before that companies have “in recent months” restructured $174 billion worth of debts, but the Central Bank figures do not bear it out.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and the head of the Palestinian National Authority Mahmoud Abbas held talks in Moscow yesterday. On the previous day Mahmoud Abbas met with President Dmitry Medvedev. As a result of the meetings, the Russian leadership pledged to support the peace process in the Middle East.
Prime Minister Putin’s speech at the State Duma.
“The deputy who could have held Mr Putin to account failed to get into the Duma. But one must hand it to the Prime Minister: his anti-crisis programme does not make one blush. How it translates in real life remains to be seen.”
Boris Yelstin first disclosed his income in April 1996 on the eve of the presidential election. He stated that he had earned 552,311.58 roubles in 1994 (here and elsewhere redenomination is taken into account) and 26,784.57 roubles in 1995. The difference was due to the fact that in 1994 Mr Yelstin had received royalties for his book “Notes of a President.”
A Russian-Italian Economic Forum which opened in Moscow yesterday had an unusually high-powered delegation of Italian businessmen. Originally it was to be led by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi who had to postpone his visit to Russia because of the earthquake. The head of the Union of Rome Industrialists and Entrepreneurs AURELIO REGINA discussed the reasons frictions between Russia and the EU hardly affect Russian-Italian relations with Kommersant’s ALEXANDER GABUYEV.
The first Government report to Parliament presented by Vladimir Putin turned out to be very detailed. The keynote of the Prime Minister’s analysis of the country’s status was: acknowledge the achievements but entertain no illusions. Indeed, 64 million square metres of new housing, a trebling of the number of schools with Internet access and 1,717,000 newborn children – all this is on the positive side of the ledger in 2008. During the economic crisis, the country’s economy has not only survived, but has demonstrated that it can grow. However, Russia is not immune to the world economic problems that triggered the crisis. Being a realist, Mr Putin warned that 2009 would be a difficult year.
Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimir Putin have reported their incomes for 2008.
The President’s official website yesterday posted data on the material status of the President as well as members of his family. In 2008 Mr Medvedev received 4,139,726 roubles as his presidential salary. With his wife he owns a 367.8 sq m apartment in the Russian Federation (his previous declaration specified that the apartment was in Moscow). He has nine accounts at Russian banks holding 2,818,780.8 roubles and a 4,700 sq m plot of land which he rents. Svetlana Medvedeva earned no income, has an account of 135,000 roubles, two parking places with a total area of 32.5 sq m and a 1999 Volkswagen Golf car. The President’s underage son, Ilya, has no income or property.
Addressing the State Duma yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cited impressive data on the reduction of external corporate debt. Out of a debt of some $500 billion the companies have paid or rescheduled $174 billion over the past few months. “They did it independently without our support”, Mr Putin stressed.
Bank assets shrank in February for the first time since the beginning of the crisis, the Central Bank admitted. For many banks the trend continued into March. Nevertheless, the Government still pins its hopes on banks in combating the crisis, Prime Minister Putin said.
Last week Dmitry Medvedev appeared to cancel “tandemocracy” when he said that he made all the key decisions. True, he put Vladimir Putin on the same footing as himself. Meanwhile the Prime Minister was busy promoting the Cabinet’s anti-crisis plans. The rest of the country was going about its usual business. The authorities had Mikhail Khodorkovsky on trial for the second time while the KPRF was quietly dragging the Government to the Strasburg Court. In the meantime various sectors of the economy were asking for financial assistance. The Government, contrary to the old Russian custom, asked no questions and splashed out to some (indeed to many), but not to others.
Can you imagine Vladimir Putin reporting to the deputies? Can you imagine our deputies badgering the Prime Minister with probing questions about why the country is slowly but steadily sinking in the quagmire of the crisis? You cannot? And rightly so. It will never happen.
Will AvtoVAZ prevail over its domestic rivals?
Along with the deputies, the Prime Minister’s speech to the State Duma will be heard by all the 25 Deputy Prime Ministers and Ministers except those who are on leave or away on business, said the Prime Minister’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov. The Prime Minister’s speech and answers to questions will take two to two and a half hours, says Mr Peskov. The report itself will take about an hour. In it the Prime Minister is going to speak about the Government’s work during the past year and the anti-crisis package, amendments to the budget and answer 12 questions from the parliamentary parties (three from each), which had been sent to him last week.
The head of Gazprom, Alexei Miller, reported to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday that the construction of the Blue Stream-2 gas pipeline (under the Black Sea via Turkey to Israel) is to go ahead as planned. Turkey has confirmed that it is interested. “I think the new Israeli Government will support the project,” Mr Putin said.
Society must consolidate, study the Government’s anti-crisis plan and accept it in order to cope with the crisis together. This was the appeal Prime Minister Vladimir Putin launched yesterday to the leaders of political parties, representatives of the business community and members of the Public Chamber.
Vladimir Putin yesterday was listening to public comments on the Government’s anti-crisis programme. The meeting had the format of a conversation with the representatives of non-governmental organisations. Also present were the speakers of the two houses of Parliament and leaders of the opposition CPRF and LDPR. The part that was open to the press did not see any impressive anti-crisis initiatives. Academician Velikhov praised the Government and suggested timidly that it should emulate the best of America’s experience.
On Wednesday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin invited the comrades from United Russia to his Novo-Ogaryovo residence to discuss ways out of the crisis (read a more detailed account on our website kp.ru). The fellow party members, engaged in a lively discussion of the food market, did not suspect that a sudden surge of demand for food, or rather dessert, was being displayed in the adjoining room.
When Prime Minister Putin published the anti-crisis programme in March he encouraged all the Cabinet members to organise its public discussion. Fulfilling his instructions the ministers were all over the television screens for two weeks. Mr Putin was the most active of all, which was natural because he was to report the anti-crisis plan to the State Duma on Monday, April 6. The Prime Minister continued the discussion of anti-crisis measures with the leaders of parties and non-governmental organisations yesterday.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had a meeting with the leaders of political parties and representatives of citizens’ organisations to hear their comments on the Government’s anti-crisis programme. “We will take into account any constructive, reasonable and feasible proposals regardless of who makes them,” Mr Putin said surveying the table at which Sergei Mironov, Boriz Gryzlov, Gennady Zyuganov and Vladimir Zhirinovsky were sitting. Mr Putin said that “we cannot pretend that nothing is happening”, assured those present that Russia would emerge strengthened from the crisis, before giving the floor to his guests.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the leaders of the parliamentary United Russia Party at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence yesterday. Among those invited were Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, his deputies, and the heads of Duma committees. The topic was the Government’s anti-crisis programme. United Russia submitted a package of proposals on social support to the Prime Minister. The package is a bizarre mixture of populism and a clear wish to make the people bear the brunt of the crisis. For example, Boris Gryzlov suggested that “construction” bonds be sold to citizens, the purchase of such bonds would be a test of their patriotism.
The leadership of the United Russia (UR) party yesterday put its proposals on improving the Government’s anti-crisis programme to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The Prime Minister in turn called on the party members to “bring in all the structural units” to explain the anti-crisis measures to the population.
