"Our friend Silvio Berlusconi is interested not only girls but also deals with concrete things", said Prime Minister Vladimir Putin during a meeting in Bryansk region of his party, United Russia, presenting Italy as a country to ' avant-garde in Europe, with attention to ecological problems.
- EDITORIAL: Berlusconi goes Down (11/02/2011)
- Berlusconi in Moscow; cable says he's Putin's man (03/12/2010)
- Leaks Shows U.S. Condescension Toward Berlusconi (20/02/2011)
- Leaks Shows U.S. Condescension Toward Berlusconi (19/02/2011)
- Berlusconi in Moscow; cable says he's Putin's man - BusinessWeek (03/12/2010)
What good things has Putin done for Russia during the recent ten years? Every
ReplyDeletetime, when I hear people saying this, it surprises me how quickly people
can forget things. It seems that they have forgotten a lot about the
1990s. Do they remember the crisis of 1998, when the dollar skyrocketed from 6 to 20 rubles in less than one month? Do they remember the faces of those people who had considerable debts in dollars? Just for comparison, the
dollar rate changed just for a couple of rubles from January 2000 up
until now. If someone had promised during the 1990s that the ruble rate
would be practically still for ten years - no one would have ever
believed that person. Do they remember the mobsters who would race their
Mercedes cars in the wrong lane? Would anyone try to stop them back then
as they try to stop official vehicles now? Now one can make videos of
these races and upload them on the Internet. If someone tried to film
mobsters during the 1990s, they would either be injured or just killed.
Do they remember the morale which we had during the second half of the
1990s? Everyone would think that tomorrow would be much worse than
today. When Putin was saying that the national GDP would double,
everyone thought that he was just joking.Do they remember the grocery stores of the 1990s? They were not Soviet- like anymore, but they were not Western-like either. They were tiny, dirty and there was not much to choose from. Do they remember so-called shuttle traders who lived at the expense of the underdeveloped commercial system? Do they remember the total absence of consumer loans, credit cards, large supermarkets and many other types of consumer infrastructure? Do they remember the average salary of $100, which would make such things as buying new cars and booking holidays abroad a luxury? Do they remember the Russian style of business which was prospering during the 1990s? Commodity bases in dirty basements, big and bald-headed guys in tracksuits, illegal salaries in dollars - do they
remember?Do they remember that infamous jealousy to Europeans and
Americans, who had to work for just one month to afford a powerful
computer? Do they remember the Internet which which was ten times as
faster and ten times as cheaper in the West? A lot of things have changed in the country, people, really a lot.Russia today is a normal European country which is quite affordable for living. Of course, the country has too many problems, but it is not the impoverished Russia, in which the average pension was $20. It is not the country where the IMF can be the boss.