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Subject From Russia With Love. Putin - June in Russia: A Month of Surprises.

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[quote:Aussie from Perth:MV8yNjAyMjZfNDYxNTMxNF80OTg1OTAxNw==]
I like his tact below.:-)

PUTIN, IN WEBCAST, TAKES UP STRATEGIC ISSUES, INSISTS RUSSIA'S REAL ECONOMY MUST DEVELOP THROUGH 'INNOVATION'

[Source: Yandex.ru transcript, July 6]
    For several hours this evening, Russian President Vladimir Putin answered questions submitted from all over the world, in his latest webcast. Nearly 157,000 questions came to the Russian collection site alone; all were catalogued, published, and could be voted on. Another 5,000 questions were submitted through the BBC, whose correspondent Bridget Kendall, however, was permitted to pick about half the questions actually put to Putin, which resulted in a bias in the direction of the Western media's favorite litanies. (Meanwhile, scanning the questions submitted through Yandex.ru, but not put to Putin, shows that there were hundreds and hundreds of really thoughtful questions about possible improvements in economic policy, especially, that came from Russian citizens.)
    Putin's first several replies, to questions about North Korea's missile tests, and the Iran situation, will not be detailed here. Putin cited official the Russian Foreign Ministry's official expressions of concern about the missile tests, but urged that "emotions not overwhelm common sense" in considering what happened. He said the negotiation process should resume. On Iran, the Russian President urged that the question of its nuclear program be returned to the IAEA, not the UN Security Council.
    Putin's most striking remarks came on international and internal economic questions. They were in line with the recent signs of a shift in Russian thinking, which were discussed by Russian participants in last week's EIR seminar in Berlin, and will be featured in the July 14 EIR. These replies began with a deft destabilization of Kendall by Putin, as follows:

Kendall: "The next topic is the main topic for the G-8 summit--energy security. Many people in Europe are worried about the reliability of Russian supplies, especially after you turned off the gas to Ukraine in January. Our site received a lot of questions along these lines. Here, Tom McLuhan from London asks, 'Could there be a situation, where Russia would turn off the gas to Western Europe?'"
    Putin: "May I ask you a question? How much did your necklace cost? Approximately."
    Kendall: "Oh, what an unexpected question."
    Putin: "But you ask me unexpected questions."
    Kendall: "That will be very interesting for some thief who is listening to our conversation."
    Putin: "I assure you, any thieves have already been able to make an appraisal. So, feel free to name the figure, at least approximately."
    Kendall: "I'm happy to say it was several hundred pounds."
    Putin: "Excellent, good! So would you sell it for five kopeks or one ruble? You'd hardly agree to that, would you?"
    Kendall: "Since you're the President of Russia."
    Putin: "To the President, maybe. To affirm the particularly close relations between Great Britain and Russia, maybe. But you'd hardly sell it to a man in the street for peanuts. So why should Russia give away its property and its natural resources for peanuts?"

Putin then justified the terms of calculating the natural gas price for sales to Ukraine on a new basis, agreed to by President Yushchenko, at some length, attacking the press hysteria over this as pressure on Russia. Most interesting, he brought up the way in which the low gas prices in Ukraine, maintained for many years, had--under conditions of globalization --set up Ukraine to have the guts of its industrial capacity grabbed by sharks. In particular, "If you want us to supply our gas to Ukraine at dumping prices, you must understand that you are getting us to help you create a non-competitive environment for certain economic sectors in Europe. So Mittal Steel acquired the biggest steel company in Ukraine, Kryvorizhstal. And what if they can get gas for $50 per thousand cubic meters, while Arcelor's plants in Germany have to pay $230?"
    Still in this same answer, Putin enunciated his reformulated economic priorities for Russia (even while also repeating the old dicta about not letting oil revenue fan inflation by spending too much of it inside the country): "First of all, one of our main tasks in economic development is the diversification of our economy. We want to make it an innovation economy. That is why we established the Investment Fund, where money will be allocated chiefly to develop infrastructure, and innovation. That is why we are now setting up a Venture Fund. This is why we have adopted laws and established special economic zones, earmarked for the development, first and foremost, of high-tech. That is why we are creating special conditions for the development of, for example, nanotechnologies."
[/quote]

Original Message Im really getting to like this guy.

Go Putin.

This article appears in the July 14, 2006 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

June in Russia: A Month of Surprises
by Roman Bessonov

Since his elevation to the Russian Presidency in 1999, Vladimir Putin regularly takes political analysts by surprise. This year it is happening more and more frequently.

For professional political analysts, Putin's decisions in diplomacy, foreign trade, and domestic policy, especially when it comes to personnel assignments, bring on real headaches. Forced to give some plausible explanation of the latest trip abroad, or a new appointment at home, the commentators often invent two or three parallel versions of what might be behind it. Sometimes it turns out that all the explanations were wrong, and the real significance of the event is revealed months, or even years, later.

[link to www.larouchepub.com]

Snip:

Harvard's Kenneth Rogoff points out that Putin might well be envied by every other G-8 leader, since he is the only one of them who could be re-elected, if he wishes, tomorrow. The point is well taken. It could be added that Washington's preferred alternative to Putin, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov, is, by contrast, the most colorless "colored revolution" stooge ever contemplated. And his greatest blunder was not the hasty purchase of a country house on his last day in office, but his public statements in support of the business oligarchs.

Openly, Vladimir Putin declared only once, at the start of his first Presidential term, that "the oligarchs should be kept equally distant" from state power. This remark was later ridiculed, as not all of the tycoons were distanced at the same moment.

Today, however, it is quite obvious that the leading role in the Russian economy has been acquired by state-dominated corporations and banks, while the previously dominant privately owned oligarchical groups are now unable to dictate their will to the state, or to privatize Russia's foreign policy.

Today, international financial institutions no longer dictate Russia's budget policy. Not only the Federal authorities, but also Russia's regions are refusing to borrow from the World Bank. Numerous foreign non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which freely operated in the country in Yeltsin's time, are now forced either to comply with newly adopted legislative restrictions, or to curtail their activity in Russia.

Today, persons in the government who had earned their reputations as free-market liberals, are displaying a shift in the direction of dirigist economic policies. Meanwhile, libertarian blockheads, typified by von Hayekian professor Yevgeni Yasin and ex-Presidential Advisor Andrei Illarionov, are alienated from policy-making.

The preparations for this change required a long time, great patience, personal courage, and a high level of privacy in decision-making. June 2006 was a month of surprises, unravelling one after another.

Take Finance Minister Kudrin's exclamation that "Russia will no longer stand with an outstretched hand!" Or, Medvedev's promotion of the ruble as a world reserve currency. And Gazprom's rapid-fire move into numerous European markets, with new export agreements.

Or, the surprise initiatives of Russia's Nuclear Energy Agency, echoed by Defense Minister Ivanov's surprise directive, announced in St. Petersburg, that 90% of Russia's military production should involve dual-use technologies.

A strategic shift, equally in political, economic, foreign, and public affairs, is quite evident. This does not mean that it is irreversible. The recent example of Ukraine, where the first economic results of Victor Yanukovich's government were buried by the postmodernist coup d'état, labeled a "revolution," at the end of 2004, exemplifies the fragility of a political construction, in which the leader who has some progressive intentions is separated from the people by a formidable barrier, such as the powerful parasitic class, rooted back in the late Soviet period, to which most of today's criminal groups owe their rise.

"Do you enjoy visiting your native city?" a journalist asked Putin in Shanghai. Again, Putin was unusually sincere. "I'd like to," he said. "But in my native city, I am also surrounded by bodyguards."

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