Russia 101202 Basic Political Developments

Vladimir Putin: profile

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/8173950/Vladimir-Putin-profile.html

Vladimir Putin is one of the world's most high-profile leaders.

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow 2:52PM GMT 01 Dec 2010

Yet when he was gifted the presidency in 1999 it is easy to forget that he was virtually unknown, even inside Russia.

The man who made Mr Putin's political career was Boris Yeltsin, Russia's erratic and gaffe-prone first post-Soviet president.

Mr Yeltsin was in increasingly poor health and unexpectedly resigned on New Year's Eve 1999 appointing Mr Putin the country's acting president.

Mr Putin, 58, has never looked back since. He quickly moved to establish himself as a tough-talking leader whose acerbic man-of-the-people comments have delighted ordinary Russians since.

Backed by the Kremlin's powerful state machine, he convincingly won a presidential election in 2000 and again in 2004.

In 2008 newly-elected President Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin loyalist, appointed Mr Putin as prime minister.

Mr Putin is also leader of Russia's ruling United Russia party and remains, by most accounts, the country's most powerful politician.

A former KGB spy who served in then East Germany in the 1980s, Mr Putin famously revels in his image as Russia's man of action.

Popular with Russian women who admire his flinty personality, his fans have lost count of the number of extreme sports and other activities he has been filmed doing.

He has piloted nuclear bombers, hung out with hard-core bikers, hunted for whales, tagged tigers, and earlier this year completed a long road trip across Russia's Far East.

Married with two children, speculation about his personal life has been rife in recent years.

Mr Putin is heavily associated with Chechnya's troubled modern history and was instrumental in launching the Second Chechen War in 1999 in order to crush growing Islamist extremism. His supporters believe that he saved Russia from anarchy and possible disintegration in the 1990s and gave ordinary Russians something to be proud about again.

His critics in the West believe he has relentlessly rolled back democracy and turned Russia into a corrupt neo-Soviet police state run by its shadowy FSB security service.

Perminov Says Spaceship Fixed After Incident

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/perminov-says-spaceship-fixed-after-incident/425462.html
02 December 2010

Associated Press

A Russian spacecraft that suffered rough handling during transportation to the launch pad has been repaired and is safe to carry the next crew to the international space station, the nation's space chief said Tuesday.

Federal Space Agency head Anatoly Perminov said the Soyuz TMA-20 was sent back to the manufacturer after the October incident. A thorough check revealed no damage to the ship's systems, he said, but some components were replaced to make it absolutely safe.

"They replaced all equipment that might have suffered some damage, even though they performed fine during checks," Perminov told reporters. "After that, they checked it again and then sent the ship to the Baikonur cosmodrome."

Soyuz spacecraft are assembled by state-controlled RKK Energia at a factory in Korolyov, just outside Moscow, then transported by rail to Baikonur — 2,000 kilometers southeast in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz TMA-20 is set to blast off Dec. 15 to ferry a crew of Russian Dmitry Kondratyev, U.S. astronaut Catherine Coleman and the European Space Agency's Paolo Nespoli to the orbiting outpost.

Perminov also met with the crew members over tea.

Coleman, a veteran of two U.S. space shuttle missions, said after the meeting that she was fully confident that the Russian engineers had made the ship safe to fly.

"It's absolutely safe enough," she said. "I have worked here in Russia for a long time, and I trust them."

The international space station marked its 10th anniversary on Nov. 20. The mammoth space lab consists of 10 modules built by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 18-state European Space Agency.

Soyuz spacecraft will be the only link to the station after the planned retirement of the U.S. shuttle fleet next year. Coleman said that shouldn't create any problems.

"When I look around at [Russia's space agency], at Energia, at all the different organizations here in Russia, the people who actually build hardware, put it together and the same thing in Europe, in Japan, in the United States … the people are the same," she said. "And they all have the same dream, and they all care about the crew who goes to space, and they want them to come home, and I trust that."

Coleman said her 10-year-old son, Jamey, has closely followed her training and feels excited about her mission.

"He has a small toy tiger, and I take this tiger with me all over the world," she said. "And I take pictures of what I'm working on with the tiger, and I think it makes him think: 'What's the tiger doing today? I wonder if that was difficult, I wonder what the tiger needed to know.'"

During the meeting with Perminov, Coleman said the difference in weight between her and Nespoli, who is very tall, made her son ask whether he might squeeze in.

"He might follow you later," Perminov said.

PRESS DIGEST - Russia - Dec 2

http://af.reuters.com/article/energyOilNews/idAFLDE6B103N20101202
Thu Dec 2, 2010 8:11am GMT

MOSCOW Dec 2 (Reuters) - The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Thursday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.

KOMMERSANT

www.kommersant.ru

- Russia is threatening the United States with a renewed arms race.

- The Russian government refused on Wednesday to support a 23 percent increase in railways shipment fees in 2012.

- Russia has launched public discussions of a new draft law on education.

VEDOMOSTI

www.vedomosti.ru

- Russia's businessmen have no faith in the national economy, the daily says in connection with reports that businesses saved about 30 trillion roubles in bank accounts in 2010 instead of investing.

- "We have survived the most critical period of the crisis but we have not yet eliminated its basic cause", the head of state lender Sberbank German Gref says in an interview.

ROSSIISKAYA GAZETA

www.rg.ru

- Russian lawmakers will discuss amending criminal law to reduce the number of crimes foreseeing arrests and imprisonment, Supreme Court chairman Vyacheslav Lebedev says.

- Russia may turn to the Australian dollar as an element of its national reserves, according to Alexei Ulyukayev, first deputy head of the central bank.

NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA

www.ng.ru

- Russia's natural gas monopoly Gazprom (GAZP.MM) plans to spend up to 15.5 billion euro on building a pipeline to supply Europe with gas bypassing Ukraine.

- Russia has made utopian forecasts for its economic development in 2011 according to the budget approved by parliament on Wednesday.

IZVESTIA

www.izvestia.ru

- Russian Orthodox Church Patriach Kyrill, 64, would like to travel to space, the daily says.

- Russia's top anti-drug watchdog Viktor Ivanov is urging the United Nations to define the threat of drugs spreading from Afghanistan as a global threat to international security.

- Police have detained a lawmaker's aide who is accused of selling jopbs in parliament for up to $200,000.