Windows to RussiaThat is the full version video of Dmitry Medvedev’s Inauguration at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on May 7th, 2008.
I thought that all our readers may be interested in the Presidential Inauguration. Today is unique & historic for Russia it will be for the first time that an incumbent President will hand over the authority to a new national leader while still in office. Boris Yeltsin resigned as President before the end of his term.
Kyle & Svet
comments always welcome.
Hello,![](http://i201.photobucket.com/albums/aa306/kylekeeton/coffee.gif")
Today is a special day in Russia:
Dmitry Medvedev will be inaugurated as Russian President today. He will become Russia’s third President, to succeed his predecessors Boris Yeltsin (elected as President of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 19991 and re-elected as President of the Russian Federation in 1996) and Vladimir Putin (elected as the country’s President in 2000 and 2004). Medvedev won a presidential election held on March 2, 2008.
Today is unique & historic for Russia it will be for the first time that an incumbent President will hand over the authority to a new national leader while still in office. Boris Yeltsin resigned as President before the end of his term.
Kyle & Svet
Hello,
Putin had his last meeting as President of Russia, will his next meeting be as Prime Minister?
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Yesterday Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met with his former and future subordinates.
“My words of gratitude are addressed not only to those present here today, but also to those of our colleagues in the Administration and in the Government who are absent today, but worked with us in different periods of time and contributed to the revival of the Russian economy, social sphere, and the strengthening of our state’s defense.” Stated Putin.
Putin also said:“The cooperation between the Administration of the President and the Government will become closer, authorities must function as a single tuned mechanism.”
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Wednesday May 7th, 2008: Medvedev will be sworn in as Russia’s new President.
I see big plans on the horizon…..
Kyle & Svet
RBC, Moscow 16:28:36.The United Aircraft Building Corporation’s (UABC) net profit
under RAS amounted to RUB 121.034m (approx. USD 5m) , the company reported. Revenue totaled RUB 27.151m (approx. USD 1.14m). Proceeds from the participation in other organizations reached RUB 265.24m (approx. USD 11m). Earlier, UABC President Alexei Fyodorov announced that sales of all the companies part of the United Aircraft Building Corporation were estimated to reach at RUB 120bn (approx. USD 5bn).
RBC, Moscow 15:53:30.Russia’s external debt shrank 1.7 percent in the first quarter of 2008, from $44.9bn as of January 1, 2008 to $44.1bn as of April 1, 2008, the Russian Finance Ministry reported. The outstanding debt to Paris Club creditors decreased 11 percent to $1.6bn.
RBC, Moscow 15:31:20.The Russian stock market will trade moderately positive this week, experts told RBC TV, adding that the RTS index would try to reach a level within the range of 2,160-2,180 points. The rise is most likely to be bolstered by Gazprom and Sberbank, as well as other key index growth drivers. Meanwhile, low trading activity will persist on the Russian market until the end of the week, despite the upcoming presidential inauguration and subsequent stepped-up government activity. The banking sector’s potential is seen as high in the longer term, with predictions of prices not only reaching their IPO levels, but also hitting some new highs.
RBC, Moscow 14:59:35.OGK-1’s net profit under IFRS dropped by a factor of three to RUB 1.966bn (approx. USD 83m) in 2007 compared to a year earlier, the Russian power generation company said in a statement. Revenue grew 49 percent to RUB 44.891bn (approx. USD 1.887bn). Pre-tax profit shrank three times to RUB 2.748bn (approx. USD 116m).
RBC, Moscow 13:47:16.Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a federal law setting out the procedure for foreign investment in enterprises considered as strategically important to ensure national security, the leader’s press office reported. The bill was passed by the State Duma on April 2 and approved by the Federation Council on April 16.
RBC, Moscow 13:23:27.Georgia is discrediting the Russian peacekeeping mission in the Georgia-Abkhazia conflict zone in order to justify the use of military force, the Russian Defense Ministry believes. The ministry’s information and media relations department announced today that it had been with the support of several NATO nations and foreign-sponsored military build-up that Georgian politicians began to feel they were in a position to discredit Russian peacekeeping efforts and condone the use of military force in settling ethnic conflicts. A Defense Ministry source said the May 4 incident with two Georgian spy planes shot down by Abkhaz air defense proved that Tbilisi had long given up on resolving the conflict peacefully.
RBC, Moscow 11:55:05.AVTOVAZ’s sales grew 22.8 percent to 212,200 cars between January and April 2008 from the same period a year earlier. During the first four months of 2008, AVTOVAZ sold 56,600 Lada Samaras, 59,600 Lada 2105/2107s, 57,900 Lada 111/112/Prioras, 30,600 Lada Kalinas, and 7,500 Lada 4x4s, exporting over 37,400 Ladas, 15 percent more than in January-April 2007. In April 2008 alone, over 67,000 AVTOVAZ-produced cars were sold on the Russian market, 29 percent more than during the same month of 2007.
RBC, Moscow 15:47:44.Russia’s National Welfare Fund totaled RUB 773.82bn, or USD 32.72bn, as of May 1, 2008, the Finance Ministry reported. The balance on the Fund’s foreign currency accounts amounted to USD 14.31bn, EUR 9.74bn and GBP 1.62bn. The Ministry estimated the return on investment of the fund’s reserves at USD 0.23bn, or RUB 5.36bn for the period between January 30 and April 30. The figures were calculated based on official foreign exchange rates of the Bank of Russia as of the date previous to the reporting date.
RBC, Moscow 14:44:14.Russia’s customs offices transferred some RUB 371.87bn (approx. USD 15.72bn) to the federal budget in April 2008, which is 11.08 percent, or RUB 37.1bn (approx. USD 1.57bn), above the target, according to Russia’s Federal Customs Service. Hence, the total year-to-date contribution of the customs authorities reached RUB 1.375 trillion (approx. USD 58.115bn), exceeding the target by 4.39 percent.
RBC, Moscow 12:58:20.Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port (NCSP) has acquired 50 percent in Lomonosov Cargo Terminal for EUR 77m from Frameno Limited, the port indicated in a press release. The deal was reached on May 1, 2008. The state controls 20 percent in the Russian ports operator was established in 1992.
RBC, Moscow 11:43:06.Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods has scheduled its annual general shareholders meeting for June 27, 2008. The meeting will be held on a standard agenda. This was reported in a statement the company released today. The record date is May 12, 2008.
RBC, Moscow 14:58:53.As of May 1, 2008, Russia’s Reserve Fund amounted to RUB 3.069 trillion, or USD 129.80bn, the Finance Ministry reported. The balance on foreign currency accounts stood at USD 56.95bn, EUR 38.57bn, and GBP 6.37bn. The return on investments for the period between January 30 and April 30 was estimated at USD 0.85bn, or RUB 20.08bn. The figures were calculated based on the official foreign exchange rates of the Bank of Russia as of the date previous to the reporting date.
RBC, Moscow 12:47:26.The RAS-based net profit of Surgutneftegas nearly doubled in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the same figure a year earlier, reaching virtually RUB 19.519bn (approx. USD 824.98m), the company said in a statement. However, this is 38.89 percent below the respective Q4 figure of RUB 31.942bn (approx. USD 1.35bn).
Jailed U.S. pastor appeals smuggling sentence
15:26 | 05/ 05/ 2008
MOSCOW, May 5 (RIA Novosti) – An appeal has been filed with a Moscow court against a jail sentence of more than three years handed down to an American pastor for illegally bringing ammunition into Russia, a defense attorney said Monday.
Moscow’s Golovinsky district court sentenced Phillip Miles, 58, to three years and two months in prison last month for the illegal possession and smuggling of rifle rounds, declarable under Russian customs law, into the country for his Russian hunting partner.
“We filed an appeal on Sunday with the secretariat of the Golovinsky court, which will be redirected to the Moscow City Court,” attorney Vladimir Ryakhovsky said.
The defense wants the court to acquit Miles of the smuggling charges citing an absence of criminal intention and is requesting the pastor’s sentence be confined to the illegal possession charges. The defense said either the court should release Miles taking into account the time spent on remand or suspend his sentence.
The lawyer added that Miles has also submitted a complaint against the court’s ruling calling it “severe and inadequate.”
Miles, of the Christ Community Church in Conway, South Carolina, was caught with a box of twenty .300-caliber rifle cartridges after landing at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport on January 29.
“Phillip’s complaint is rather emotional, while my appeal contains a thorough legal analysis of the situation notifying that the court ignored the differences between instructions on items declarable in Sheremetyevo airport in the Russian and English languages,” the lawyer said.
According to Ryakhovsky, after reading airport customs advisory boards, the pastor followed the green channel, believing he had no items to declare.
Miles, who visited the country on more than 10 occasions and almost always stayed with his friend in the town of Perm, said the rounds were for his friend’s lever-action Winchester rifle, an antique item that is rare in Russia. The two men were both keen hunters, and had hunting licenses.
The pastor, his lawyer and defense witnesses have said the cleric’s actions were unintentional. After his sentence was read out, Miles told the court: “I’m very disappointed. It’s a strange sentence for one box of hunting bullets.”
Explaining the ruling, the judge said: “The court is skeptical over the pastor’s statement that he did not know he had to declare ammunition being brought into the country – this runs contrary to evidence presented in court.”
The appeal date is expected to be scheduled within a month.
http://windowstorussia.com/2008/04/now-they-are-in-uproar-pastor-phillip.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/04/usa-has-rules-on-firearms-ammunition-at.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/04/russia-items-to-declare-at-border.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/04/usa-pastor-phillip-miles.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/04/russia-pastor-phillip-miles-gets-three.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/04/phillip-miles-what-will-be-outcome.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/03/pastor-phillip-miles-still-in-prison.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/more-on-phillip-miles.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/pastor-phillip-miles.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/russia-important-update-on-american.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/russia-update-on-pastor-phillip-miles.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/why-did-i-try-to-walk-into-russia-with.html
http://kylekeeton.com/2008/02/why-would-anyone-bring-ammunition-into.html
Hello,
We have a few pictures of our trip that did not get lost .
I thought that I would post some pictures of World War II tanks that we came across in Russia. They are in very good shape and are situated near a battle field of a large tank battle in WWII.
This is where we had stopped on the first leg of our trip, at a town in Russia called Prohorovskoe(Belgorodskaya oblast’). We stayed in a hotel that Putin stayed in when he was in this town. We found out that Yeltsin had all the major monuments put in this area. The town has fantastic sites to see and beautiful churches & of course Tanks!
I thought that maybe you would enjoy the tanks also….
Kyle & Svet
comments always welcome.
PS: Barrett from Huma B Post, he loves tanks! So I thought I would give him & anyone else who loves tanks some pictures to look at.
1. Tank Monument.
2. Wore out bus.
3. Church.
4. WWII fighter plane.
5.Bus stop, Soviet style!
Kyle & Svet
Hello,
I know all about the American Missile system but I thought that I would expand my knowledge about Russian missiles.
Russia has very sophisticated Missiles. At present, Russia operates 48 silo-based Topol-M systems and will build another two silos in the Saratov Region in southern Russia this year, bringing the total number to 50.
The missile, has a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 km), is said to be immune to any current and future U.S. ABM defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill using terminal phase interceptors, and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys.
It is also shielded against radiation, electromagnetic pulse, nuclear blasts, and is designed to survive a hit from any known form of laser technology.
Makes me think twice before I would attack Russia. To give you an idea about how far 7000 miles is look at the list below for some major cities….. (distance in miles)
Mumbai to Moscow = 3136,
Delhi to Moscow = 2708,
Frankfurt to Moscow = 1253,
Hong Kong to Moscow = 6063,
London to Moscow = 1557.
Montreal to Moscow = 5259,
New York to Moscow = 5620,
Paris to Moscow = 1553,
Rome to Moscow = 1476,
Singapore to Moscow = 5242,
Sydney to Moscow = 11044,
Tehran to Moscow = 1526,
Tokyo to Moscow = 4667!
Sometimes I just write what I think about. This is one of those times. Sometimes we need to put things in perspective.
Kyle & Svet
comments always welcome.
Hello,
Interesting Article that I found in the Kansas City.com
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By PETER FINN
The Washington Post
MOSCOW | On Wednesday, Dmitry Medvedev will walk through three gilded halls in the Grand Kremlin Palace to a rostrum where he will be sworn in as Russia’s third president, his right hand on a copy of the Russian constitution. To the strains of the national anthem, the presidential flag will be raised over the presidential residence. Medvedev will address the audience and the nation before a 30-gun salute signals the end of the ceremony and the arrival of a new leader inside the forbidding walls of the Kremlin.
The following day, with much less ceremony and more dispatch, his popular and powerful predecessor, Vladimir Putin, will almost certainly become Russia’s new prime minister. Putin will move upriver from the Kremlin to Russia’s White House, home to prime ministers, who traditionally have functioned as political errand boys for the president.
The new president and parliament will skip the traditional consultations over the choice of prime minister. “Why put it off?” asked Boris Gryzlov, speaker of the lower house of parliament. “We know whom the president will nominate.”
Since the moment last year when Putin announced his willingness to become prime minister, Russia has been gripped by questions: Who will rule Russia? Why is Putin assuming a seemingly subordinate role to Medvedev? And how long will this tango last?
“If we try to answer our favorite question — Who’s in charge?’ — we are at a loss,” said Lilia Shevtsova of the Moscow Carnegie Center. “We simply don’t know.”
Neither Putin nor Medvedev has publicly discussed the division of powers in any detail except to say they are in complete harmony about the country’s direction. The two men, who have worked together for nearly two decades, with Putin as boss, have a close personal relationship. But Russian history shows that the man in the Kremlin almost always begins to savor and exercise his authority.
Medvedev, 42,is assuming an office that according to the Russian constitution is the most powerful in the land, carrying the right to dismiss the prime minister. Under Putin, the presidential administration became the country’s unchallenged center of power, dominating parliament and the courts, reining in the media, and making leaders in the country’s sprawling regions subject to appointment by Moscow.
“Presidential power guarantees unity and the very existence of Russia,” Alexander Budberg, who is close to Medvedev, wrote this month in an essay in the newspaper Moskovsky Komsomolets. “The entire country and the bureaucratic class, seized with pride, must get used to the fact: There will be a president in Russia, and not an empty throne which has been put in storage’ for four years.”
But Putin, 55, leaves office with enormous political capital and new institutional prerogatives that at the very least will make him the most powerful prime minister the country has ever seen. Since Medvedev was elected, Putin has also been named chairman of the dominant United Russia party, beginning Thursday. The party rewrote its rules to allow its new chairman to dismiss any functionary and suspend any party activity.
“That was a clear message to the elite: I’m not dead yet,’ ” Shevtsova said.
Putin did not, however, become a member of the party he will now chair; he appears to want to direct the party but remain above it, a kind of moral leader in the eyes of Russians.
Through the party, Putin will control both houses of parliament, which can impeach the president and regional governors. He will also be master of Russia’s vast bureaucracy and state-controlled companies whose ranks are full of his loyalists.
What remains uncertain is how Putin intends to exercise this power, and to what end. Is he simply biding his time before returning to the Kremlin as president, consolidating his new position so as to rule out the unlikely possibility that Medvedev might warm to the presidency and turn against him? Or has he been careful to maintain so much power in order to protect Medvedev while the neophyte president establishes his own base in a system that would devour him without Putin’s oversight? Or is there no grand strategy, and the two men, while agreeing to share power, have not looked beyond the horizon?
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, director of the Moscow-based Center for the Study of Elites, is certain of one thing. “I’m absolutely sure that Putin is coming back” as president, she said. “Whether that happens in two or four years, I don’t know. But he will be coming back for 14 years, two new seven-year terms.”
Kryshtanovskaya points to calls by political figures such as Gryzlov for parliamentary and presidential elections to be held two years apart rather than close together, as they are now. Splitting the polls that way could trigger a new presidential election in 2010. United Russia leaders have also spoken of extending the presidential term to seven years.
Such amendments to the electoral law could see Putin back in the Kremlin until 2024. Nor has Putin ruled out a return to the Kremlin; indeed, he has publicly flirted with the idea on occasion.
“I think Medvedev is a willing participant in all of this,” Kryshtanovskaya said. “Of course, there is a very small chance that Medvedev might betray him and become a real president, and some of Putin’s moves recently are to protect himself from that.”
But Sergey Markov, a United Russia lawmaker and political analyst, said that if Medvedev proves up to the job and broadly follows the policies set by Putin, then the former president will leave the stage in a year or two.
“Putin is Medvedev’s political father,” Markov said. “If Medvedev is successful, Putin will step aside. He wants to give the chance to someone else. He will not become a simple pensioner, but he is not obsessed with keeping power. Of course, if Medvedev fails, he can return.”
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I find it interesting that people try to second guess what will happen.
I will tell you what will happen, Medvedev will be sworn in as President. Putin will be made the Prime Minister of Russia. Then behind closed doors the two men will run Russia as they see necessary!
Now we have two men, who have worked together for nearly two decades, with Putin always as the leader and have a close personal relationship. The plans that are in effect have been in effect for years.
Now Putin has twice as much power……
I hope he uses it wisely!
Kyle & Svet
According to RIA Novosti news agency:
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Georgia has deployed almost 7,500 troops on its border with Abkhazia, the defense minister of the breakaway republic said on Sunday.
Merab Kishmaria said should a military operation begin, some 3,000 troops will apparently be used to seize the Kodori Gorge, in the northeast of Abkhazia.
“We are watching the movement of troops in the Kodori Gorge. According to our intelligence, up to 7,500 Georgian troops on the Georgian-Abkhaz border are on alert, with 3,000 of them to be used in attempting to take the Kodori Gorge,” he said.
He added that the Abkhaz armed forces had also been put on combat alert and that there would be enough forces and military equipment to repulse any “Georgian aggression.”
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I do not think that Abkhaz will be a push over & Georgia better watch their P&Q’s.
Besides this is not far from Sochi, someone better get it under control before the Olympics…..
Kyle
comments always welcome.
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