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
It did not turn out to be a frank conversation, a participant in Vladimir Putin's meeting with the heads of the United Russia regional branches held at the Volzhsky Utyos holiday home in Samara complained to Newsweek last Thursday. "Before the meeting the Secretary of the Presidium of the party's General Council, Vyacheslav Volodin, urged the party members to "brace themselves for a review by the leader."
Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko arrived in Moscow yesterday to meet Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to outline the gas issue. And a line will be drawn, but only in three years after the introduction of market prices.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin called an extraordinary meeting Thursday on the construction of the East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline (ESPO) in the Novo-Ogaryovo residence. It was announced that reverse oil shipments along the first ESPO leg would begin today with an opening ceremony.
Both Putin and Tymoshenko have been commenting on yesterday's article in Izvestia which describes how President Yushchenko armed Saakashvili's army.
Talks between Prime Ministers Vladimir Putin of Russia and Yulia Tymoshenko of Ukraine took place at Novo-Ogaryovo yesterday. ANDREI KOLESNIKOV, a special Kommersant correspondent, after listening to the Prime Ministers discuss events that preceded their negotiations, understood that Moscow had found its key Ukrainian partner.
Yesterday the Government gathered to discuss long-term socio-economic development through 2020. The Cabinet approved the document with some revisions, but an announced tax reform has become the main news: the unified social tax will give way to pension insurance fund contributions, which all companies are to do at the same stake - 26% of the salary fund.
The government approved the concept of Russia's development through 2020 on Wednesday, October 1, a dramatic advance that no one had expected. The Prime Minister listed the goals he expected to reach by 2020, but in reality, Russians can expect changes in their lives much sooner than that. The greatest reform is expected in the retirement pension system between 2009 and 2010.
The financial crisis, coupled with the need to improve pensioners' living standards, has forced the Government to take unpopular measures. Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin announced that the unified social tax (UST) will be replaced in 2010 by insurance contributions. An employer will effectively pay a new social tax at the rate of 34%. The previous highest rate of the UST was 26%. To prevent a dramatic increase in the fiscal burden, the authorities promised to reduce other taxes, but which and by how much is anybody's guess.
With the US still undecided about what to do with its financial crisis, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday had to make important decisions on his own. The Russian Government's meeting, which again failed to approve the concept of the country's long-term development through 2020 (but instead approved almost all its main components) was preceded by very nervous expectation and some developments, unnoticed by the general public, that have prompted our special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov to draw some far-reaching conclusions.
Under the guise of a final discussion on pension reform led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the White House last night, the Cabinet officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Alexei Kudrin and Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina, decided the fate of Plan-2020. Their decision concerning this key component of the economic policy will be announced at the Cabinet meeting scheduled for today.
US President George Bush is not the only man who has a costly plan to bail out the financial sector. A similar, albeit somewhat cheaper, plan has been offered by the Russian Government. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made it clear yesterday that he was trying hard to disperse the clouds gathering over not only the American and European, but also the Russian economies.
Vladimir Putin announced unprecedented measures to support the financial system yesterday. The Central Bank will transfer about $50 billion to the Foreign Economic Bank (VEB) from gold and currency reserves. It will be used to issue loans to companies that are unable to pay back foreign credits.
The Bank of Russia has been told to issue unsecured stabilisation loans to the banking system, and Vnesheconombank (VEB) should pitch-in to solve the problems of the corporate sector, for which it will be issued $50 billion to refinance companies' credits. The decisions were made yesterday during a meeting at Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's office. The cost of the issue is at least 8% of the Central Bank reserves and a possible downgrade in the country's credit rating. Economists are sure that these actions will only be able to keep Russia's financial problems at bay until the end of the year.
The meeting of the Government Presidium, which was scheduled to discuss the plan for Russia's long-term development submitted by the Ministry of the Economy, has been canceled. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave another 48 hours to end the disputes over Plan-2020, which has been in the works since 2006.
Vladimir Putin met the head coach of the St Petersburg Zenit football squad, Dick Advocaat, on Saturday. The two men agreed that politicians and coaches are doomed to loneliness. Kommersant's special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV believes they should have included journalists in that list. He is sure that Dick Advocaat, who was planning to go to Holland, will stay in St Petersburg.
A Just Russia party complained to the prime minister of being oppressed in the State Duma. On Tuesday Vladimir Putin held a meeting with deputies representing this parliamentary party. The MPs explained why they voted against the draft budget, complained of plagiarism in the State Duma and compared the effectiveness of their lawmaking with that of a steam engine.
For the first time in six months the Cabinet met on the fifth floor of the White House after costly repairs had been completed. The Prime Minister's office, private apartment and the government conference hall are all on that floor. The Government Presidium is housed in the former reception room, which has been lavishly refurbished. Having reviewed the efforts of the authorities to deal with the liquidity crisis and stop the fall of stock exchange indexes, the Prime Minister declared that the market had in fact been restored.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, just back from Sochi, was obviously in an upbeat mood during the Monday meeting of the Cabinet, in spite of all the financial troubles. Before he presented himself to the full Presidium in the revamped office he had gone into a huddle with Central Bank President Sergei Ignatyev, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Alexei Kudrin, the Minister of Telecommunications and Mass Communications Igor Shchyogolev, and then again with Mr Kudrin.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin moved into a new office in September, as planned. Yesterday he moved from the third to the fifth floor, into the refurbished Prime Minister's area to chair the first meeting of the Government Presidium after his leave to review the stock market crisis. In the new and brighter office the financial crisis looked as good as over.
Late Thursday night, Vladimir Putin held a meeting with the top executives of major international companies, including Deutsche Bank, Siemens AG, Mitsubishi, Chevron, BP and other participants of the Sochi International Investment Forum.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has left chilly Moscow for subtropical Sochi. He will spend the next two days convincing the world business community that the economic crisis will bypass Russia, despite the slumping stock market. He met with foreign entrepreneurs on Thursday, and will address an investment forum next Friday and then meet with Russia's top financial managers.
Vladimir Putin has settled in the Riviera, a prime-ministerial residence next to a park of the same name, in Sochi. Journalists from the Government pool were first admitted to it a few days ago.
On September 18, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin received foreign businessmen who had come to the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi to take part in the Sochi Economic Forum. Andrei Kolesnikov, a Kommersant special correspondent, regarded this meeting as the presentation of the Government's economic mobilisation plan.
Yesterday Prime Minister Vladimir Putin chaired a meeting of the Presidium of the Council for the Preparation for the 2014 Olympics. Kommersant special correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov reported that the unresolved problems surrounding the preparation for the Olympics made the Prime Minister blow his top. Mr Putin gave an ultimatum to the members of the Presidium demanding that they resolve matters by the next morning - not before and not after.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin hosted a video conference between the officers of the emergency operations centre in charge of dealing with the consequences of the armed conflict in South Ossetia. At the emergency centre of the Ministry for Emergency Situations, Mr Putin listened to the progress reports by the ministers and had a video conference with people in Tskhinvali and Vladikavkaz. The Prime Minister made a statement that, given the status of South Ossetia as an independent and sovereign state, funding will flow from the Russian state treasury straight to the republic. Eduard Kokoity, the President of South Ossetia, has promised that any utility, medical and transport services will be provided in the republic free of charge through January 1, 2009.
On September 12, Dmitry Medvedev had his first meeting with a large group of political scientists and journalists specialising in Russian affairs - participants in the international Valdai Discussion Club. It was essential for western experts to understand "who is Mr Medvedev", and hear information about the situation in the Caucasus first-hand.
An emotion-laden interview Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave to Russian and foreign journalists attending the international Valdai Discussion Club suggests some parallels between Russia's present confrontation with the West and the beginning of the First World War in 1914. In both cases the two sides discuss the same thing, but absolutely misunderstand each other. Will the North Caucasus detonate an explosion like the Balkans in 1914? We have asked political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky, the founder of the National Strategy Institute, to answer this question while commenting on "hot" quotations from Mr Putin.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin gave an interview to the newspaper Le Figaro. He described an American plot and Russian economic progress, and explained his relationship with Dmitry Medvedev.
Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin promised to respond to the US humanitarian aid deliveries to Georgian sea ports by US naval ships, mentioning however that this will be done "calmly, without hysteria". The Prime Minister was irritated by the fact that naval ships "fitted with cutting edge missile systems" were just 200 kilometres away from the Russian presidential residence outside Sochi. The appropriate response was prepared and approved.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's recent meeting with members of the Valdai International Discussion Club has demonstrated, or rather confirmed, major changes in his behaviour. I can now understand some things in his behaviour, such as his short "er" that punctuates his otherwise smooth speech, the slow tempo of his speech, although people in St Petersburg, where Putin lived and worked before coming to Moscow, are rapid speakers. He apparently disciplined himself to search for appropriate words.
On September 9, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the aircraft industry in Ulyanovsk. Military-Technical Cooperation bulletin presents excerpts of the meeting record revealed to the media.
The day after Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin had hours-long meeting with political analysts and journalists and members of the Valdai Club, the same group attended another meeting with President Dmitry Medvedev. Speaking on Russia's role on a global scale, the Prime Minister and the President actually switched roles: Putin elaborated more on Russia's domestic and foreign policy, while Medvedev spoke on strengthening the rouble, the national economy and investment appeal. This re-casting of roles came as no surprise to meeting attendees.
Western Europe lacks its own foreign policy. The United States wasted time and money training Georgian soldiers. Russian fuel and energy can be redirected to the East. These were the main points of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's remarks at a meeting with foreign political analysts.
"Did you expect us to wipe our bleeding nose and bow our head down?" "What did you expect us to do, wield a pen knife there?" "Did you expect us to fight with slingshots?" If the West thought that such would be the Russian response to Georgia, it was sorely mistaken, as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin explained to the Valdai Discussion Club yesterday. He reassured leading foreign experts on Russia that Moscow had no imperialist ambitions and was willing to stay in contact with the West, but that, at the same time, contacts demanded reciprocity.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with 45 members of the Valdai International Discussion Club in Sochi on Thursday. President Eduard Kokoity of South Ossetia and President Sergei Bagapsh of Abkhazia met club members shortly before the meeting commenced. The Valdai Club brings together major foreign political scientists and journalists, such as Alexander Rahr, an expert from the German Council on Foreign Relations; Professor Anatol Lieven of King's College London; Professor Nobuo Shimotomai of Hosei University, Tokyo; and Dr Nikolai Zlobin, Director of Russian and Asian Programmes at the World Security Institute in Washington, to name just a few.
Yesterday in Sochi, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin cut short with a witty and graphic rebuke renewed Western attempts to depict Russia as an aggressor. He said at the Valdai International Discussion Club that the conflict in the Caucasus was also conditioned by Europe's lack of a clear-cut foreign policy stance.
Yesterday, during his meeting with western political scientists and journalists, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin responded to the accusations of "disproportionate use of force" in Georgia. Meanwhile, South Ossetian President Eduard Kokoity stated that his republic will "certainly become part of Russia". Later Mr Kokoity said he was misunderstood, but Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov believes that Mr Kokoity's statement could be interpreted in only one possible way.
"Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned domestic aircraft makers that duties on all civil aircraft imports could be abolished if the Russian industry "acts too slowly"."
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's visit to Ulyanovsk yesterday was totally devoted to civil aircraft building. The Prime Minister visited the Aviastar aircraft factory, examining the Antonov An-124 and Tupolev Tu-204 airliners produced there. Mr Putin highlighted that import duties on foreign-made aircraft could be reduced if domestic plane makers are unable to speed up aircraft production.
Yesterday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin held a meeting on the civil aircraft industry. As Kommersant had predicted the day before, the participants discussed the possibility of abolishing aircraft import duties. Although the Prime Minister did not support the initiative directly, he warned the aircraft manufacturers that this could be done if enterprises continued with low output. Experts and participants in the meeting say, however, that the yesterday's outcome was rather favourable for the Russian aircraft industry.
Import duties for foreign aircraft and component parts may be reduced if domestic aircraft manufacturers fail to meet their targets, said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during his visit to Ulyanovsk yesterday. These coercive measures will not hinder the country's aircraft industry, but will encourage air transportation growth, the Prime Minister said during the meeting dedicated to civil aircraft production. Participants didn't seem too sure, however, that Russia's aircraft industry has a bright future ahead.
The United Russia party has not given up its ambition of conferring the status of national leader on Vladimir Putin, the Prime Minister and leader of the party. For starters, they decided to promote him to the role of the country's top human rights champion. Mr Putin's public reception offices have been opened in all the Russian regions. Anyone can come to the office to complain about the actions of the governor or the mayor and get legal advice.
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin spent a day in Astrakhan to have a look at preparations for the city's 450th anniversary, due October 5. There is no chance to commission many planned projects-modernisation of the highways, the bridges and the regional airport among them-before the deadline, so Mr Putin demanded construction and reconstruction to proceed at the previous pace after the celebration.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin put an end to weekly Government meetings. Even its presidium will not gather regularly. The latest meeting was on August 25. Last week's meeting was cancelled as the Prime Minister was away-first in the Far East and Uzbekistan, and then in Astrakhan. He will travel around Russia this whole week, too, and will have no chance to attend a Government meeting.
During the Beijing Olympic Games President Bush made another of his many blunders when he patted the female captain of the American beach volleyball team on her bare back with his hand. It was not his idea, he was asked to do it by the team. This is thought to be a good omen. If the president pats the team captain before a game, the team is sure to win the gold medal (which, incidentally, came true). In this instance, the girl mischievously turned her back to the President and thrust out her butt.
Last week, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin paid a two-day working visit to Tashkent. His talks with the Uzbek leadership produced important intergovernmental documents on the expansion of bilateral trade and economic cooperation.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin visited Astrakhan yesterday. The city will celebrate its 450th anniversary in a month, and federal jubilee allocations are being channelled into the social sphere, transport, economic development, and protection of historical monuments, including the Astrakhan Kremlin. Federal funding started only two years ago, and construction is well underway. So Putin inspected mainly sites during his visit.
Astrakhan will celebrate its 450th anniversary in early October, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin came here yesterday to see jubilee preparations. He met with local authorities and visited construction sites. Regrettably, some of the projects will not be ready by City Day. As far as Izvestia knows, the celebrations are being organised by top-notch stage decorator Boris Krasnov, a Muscovite, who intends to make the city an epitome of pageantry. Astrakhan has been promised a gala concert featuring celebrities ranging from the Igor Moiseyev Dance Company to pop icon Filipp Kirkorov. It is a pity that they will not appear at the new Music Theatre, which the city knows as Astrakhan's La Scala, and which is still under construction.
Autumn started with celebrity ratings. Vanity Fair followed Forbes in compiling a list of the world's most influential people, putting Vladimir Putin at the top and forcing previous leader Rupert Murdoch down a spot.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed a package deal in Tashkent yesterday. He secured the consent of Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov to the building of a new gas pipeline in his country and to the European price formula for the gas bought by Gazprom, but Mr Putin failed to include Uzbekistan's support for the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in the deal, as our special correspondent ANDREI KOLESNIKOV reports.
