Prime Minister Vladimir Putin sent his strongest signal yet Thursday that he plans to return to Russia's presidency in 2012. Although his words were short of an outright declaration, the fact that he would admit to considering a run underlined his steely ambition. There is almost no doubt Putin would win because of his genuine popularity and the overwhelming political dominance of his United Russia party. Putin said Russia has "overcome the peak of the economic crisis" and claimed credit for softening its impact. He added the government will have to spend more money to support the economy in the meantime as Russia continues to weather its worst economic downturn in a decade as commodities prices collapsed late last year. But it emerged from the recession in the third quarter, its GDP rising by a seasonally adjusted 0.6 percent.his industrialization drive and World War II victory, but he denounced the massive repression of that era. He accused former billionaire oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and other top shareholders in the Yukos oil company of ordering the killings of opponents and commercial rivals. Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man, is serving an eight-year sentence on fraud and tax evasion charges widely seen as a punishment for challenging Putin. Putin also accused Washington of hampering Russia's accession into the World Trade Organization
5 comments:
I strongly oppose Putin's next presidential election. There is no doubt that he will win it, but, in my opinion, he did not make Russia any better for this decade. Russia is still natural resource dependent country, and Putin increased Russia's reliance on export of natural resources. I think Putin was lucky during his presidency because oil, gas, steel, and aluminum prices grew substantially. It is important to note that prices grew mostly due to international cartels in which Russia is not participating. Thus, Russia constantly oversupplies natural resources hurting everyone including itself. What Putin could have done is at least join OPEC to stabilize oil prices since Russia is one of the largest exporters of oil.
At the same time, even though Russia had a positive economic growth (if we can trust this statistics), the previous quarters had a negative growth of more than 8 percent. Another factor that I disagree with is Khodorkovsky’s jail sentence, which is only 8 years. The US government was much stricter with Madoff putting him in jail for 150 years, and I think everyone will agree that you cannot put Khodorkovsky and Madoff together.
While I would tend to agree with Max about Russia's natural resource dependency but I do think that Putin was beneficial to Russia as they transitioned. As the video stated Putin separated business from politics. I also feel that Putin's return to the presidency of Russia would not change much because he has still remained in control of Russia as the prime minister.
I agree, his return to the presidency is not going to change anything, but I disagree that he was beneficial to Russia. In my opinion, he did not hurt Russia very much, but he missed a great opportunity to get Russia out of economic and technological lag when the oil, steel, and natural gas prices were going up since he accepted his first presidential term. It is controversial to say that he separated politics from business. By looking at the biography of current Russian millionaires and billionaires, they are all members of the Putin's government party, which means that they still maintain control over politics.
It is also true that Putin put in jail several oligarchs, but it is not clear where their money went to. At the same time, Putin's control over businesses is at the highest possible level. There is unofficial statistics that Putin holds a very large stake in Gazprom, the largest company in Russia, and several other Russian companies, and he is considered to be the richest man in Europe. Thus, it is incorrect to say that Putin separated politics from business; it is correct to say that he gained huge control and authority over businesses to his own advantage and redistributed wealth from former oligarchs to new ones. To prove that, Russia had the world’s second largest number of billionaires in 2008 before the oil, natural gas, and alumina prices dropped.
http://www.theotherrussia.org/2008/02/19/number-of-billionaires-in-russia-shoots-past-100/
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