By RUpapayday loans uk

By RUKpapayday loans uk

Tandemonium
putinBWStrong presidents like weak prime ministers, or vice-presidents, just as strong prime ministers like weak chancellors of the exchequer. It’s one of the subplots in the psychodrama at the heart of any democratic regime.

In Russia, the subplot comes with murmurs of behind-the-scenes conflict between President Vladimir Putin and his protégé, Dmitry Medvedev, who became prime minister earlier this year by means of a job swap dressed up as a presidential election.

Some critics have even imagined a Shakespearean undercurrent to the Kremlin power struggle, a story of ambition and betrayal that was evoked by last week’s visit to Moscow of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s touring production of Julius Caesar.

However, in the case of the ‘Third Rome’, as the Russian church proclaimed Moscow after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, history seems to repeat itself not as tragedy, or even farce, but as soap opera.

The emotional register of daytime television is a kind of default for Medvedev whenever he reflects on the possibility of conflict with his Kremlin mentor – over the role of the state in the economy, for example.

Such a moment occurred in a recent interview with some Finnish journalists whose obvious question – roughly, “is it true that you and the president have different views on the economy?” – prompted an almost unconscious reverie in Russia’s prime minister as he contemplated his ‘normal’ relationship with Putin.

The norm in question seems to belong in a Freudian case study – as does the syntax, frankly – but never mind. Here is Medvedev’s answer in full:
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Economy

But can Putin pay his way?
Putin’s victory puts him in a strong position to make the necessary changes to move Russia’s economy forward by eliminating corruption, reducing the government’s dependency on oil and gas sales (almost 50% of revenue last year) and privatising shadowy state companies.

The pessimistic view, however, is that Putin is actually the chief enabler of Russia’s endemic corruption, and that he was merely paying lip service to reform during the election campaign in order to counter the opposition threat.

The real problem, so the pessimists say, is that any significant reform will have to include the rule of law and free media, both of which pose a threat to the political system dominated by Putin and his clique of ex-KGB siloviki (“uniformed ones”) for the past dozen years.

In other words, stagnation beckons now Putin is safely back in the Kremlin, and so does a crackdown on dissent.

Putin’s victory came at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars in spending pledges (public sector pay rises at $50 billion a year, $650 billion in defence spending by 2018, no pension reform) and these could sow the seeds of an economic crisis in Russia before his six-year term is out.
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Politics

Kremlin caught in anti-corruption net
The Kremlin-backed anti-corruption drive that has targeted members of the Russian elite claimed two more victims this week as investigators raided the homes of senior figures at the state telecoms group Rostelecom.

The probe into Konstantin Malofeyev, one of Rostelecoms’s largest private shareholders, and its chief executive Alexander Provotorov is linked to a wider investigation into an alleged $200-million fraud at the state bank VTB.

The anti-corruption drive has already targeted the defence ministry, the Glonass navigation system and the organizers of the recent Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) in Vladivostok.

As a result, two powerful Kremlin insiders are now also trapped in the headlights of the anti-corruption drive: the head of the presidential administration Sergei Ivanov used to oversee Glonass, and First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was the government’s point man for the APEC summit.

Another Putin ally, former defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov, was embroiled in a criminal investigation last month when the Investigations Committee of Russia raided the house of a former colleague, Yevgeniya Vasilyeva, who used to hold a number of key posts in the defence ministry.

A number of high-ranking military officials are alleged to have used state funds to spruce up land and property belonging to Oboronservis, a holding company that manages state suppliers to the armed forces, and then sold the assets at below-market prices.

However, some commentators believe that Serdyukov, who was replaced last month by Sergei Shoigu, was ousted because his planned military reforms were unpopular with the army’s senior ranks.

Shoigu, a former emergency situations minister, has already launched a reshuffle at the ministry.

“It seems like the shake-up at the defence ministry spells the end for Serdyukov’s policy,” the military analyst Pavel Felgengauer told Oblomovism. “Now his reforms will simply be halted or reversed.

”Serdyukov had pledged to cut Russia’s armed forces down to size, with hefty reductions among the officers’ corps, and unsurprisingly his plans met with opposition from the military top brass. 

In the Rostelecom case, VTB claimed in a London courtroom that the bank had inadvertently loaned Malofeyev $225 million for a deal in which the buyer and seller were both companies owned by the businessman himself.
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Oil and Gas

South Stream takes pipeline plunge
A consortium led by Russia’s Gazprom has made a final investment decision to build the $20-billion South Stream undersea gas pipeline to Europe.

The decision aims to preserve Russia’s dominance in the European gas market by outflanking rival pipeline projects carrying Central Asian gas to southern Europe.

South Stream is a twin for the Nord Stream route, that pumps gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Together the two pipelines will allow Gazprom to reduce EU-bound gas exports through Ukraine to a bare minimum.

Nevertheless the timing is far from perfect for South Stream, with gas demand falling and Gazprom facing a European Union anti-trust investigation. The cost is high too.

Some analysts reckon the bill could exceed 25 billion euros once you add in the pipeline’s onshore sections. Gazprom will fund half of the total capital expenditure on the project, whose offshore section will stretch 550 miles across the Black Sea.

Gazprom and its partners in the South Stream Transport consortium say the pipeline will terminate at Tarvisio in Italy.

Gazprom owns a 50% interest in the consortium building the subsea section of the line, along with Italy’s Eni (20%), France’s EDF (15%) and the energy unit of Germany’s BASF, Wintershall (15%).

The pipeline was designed to reduce the risks of shipping gas across Belarus and Ukraine, which have had a number of price disputes with Russia, some of which have led to cuts in supplies to Europe through existing pipelines.

Gazprom will mark the start of the underwater construction phase of the project at a special ceremony on 7th December. Ultimately four parallel pipelines will go under the sea. Initial commercial deliveries through the first line are scheduled for late 2015.

South Stream’s main rival is the Nabucco pipeline (also known as the Turkey–Austria gas pipeline), which would stretch from Erzerum in Turkey to the Central European Gas Hub (CEGH) in Baumgarten, Austria.

It is seen as a way of reducing European dependence on Russian energy, with the main suppliers expected to be Iraq, Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan.

Nabucco’s shareholders are Austria’s OMV, Germany’s RWE, Hungary’s MOL, Turkey’s Botas, Bulgaria’s Bulgarian Energy Holding (BEH) and Romania’s Transgaz.
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