Word: putin
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...this costs money, and with a federal-budget deficit of more than 6% forecast for this year, Russia does not have a lot to spare. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has pledged an initial outlay of $12 billion from the budget to fund the construction projects, but that is not expected to be enough - and private investors have indicated that they may not be willing to make up the difference during the economic downturn. There are also signs that the initial cost estimates have been way off. Last July, the government said the total construction bill would run about $6.6 billion...
...Less than three months later, there was another breakthrough. On Sept. 17, Obama scrapped the Bush Administration's plan to build a missile shield in Eastern Europe, which had been seen by Russia as a blatant military threat. Even Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was impressed. He had been icy toward Obama during their July meeting - there were certainly no hugs and smiles like the ones he gave Iran's President in Tehran in 2007. But in September, Putin called Obama's decision to ax the missile shield "correct and brave," and Russia's threat to "neutralize" Bush's plan...
...inside the Russian government, the trend was going in the opposite direction. Medvedev and other liberals still felt trust for Obama and seemed ready to meet him halfway. But conservatives - mainly old-school apparatchiks, security chiefs and former KGB officers like Putin - began to express their doubts about the reset in relations. "It's been frustrating," the U.S. senior official tells TIME on condition of anonymity. "We came in with an aggressive reset mentality, and it was not necessarily shared by everyone in the Russian government. The Russians are overwhelmed by all the things we want to do tomorrow...
...proposed by Obama to protect against threats from Iran and North Korea. The new shield would be built farther away from the Russian heartland, but it has still roused the same fury from Moscow, which last month renewed its threat to point tactical missiles at Europe. And in December, Putin suggested the possibility of a new arms race between the Cold War foes. (See action-figure pictures of Vladimir Putin...
...Sergei Markov, a conservative parliamentarian from Putin's United Russia Party, says these escalations point to the conservative camp's main problem with the U.S.: a lack of trust. "There are people at the top who see Obama as just a temporary man who will soon be replaced by another," Markov tells TIME. "There are people at the top who say this reset is all just a trick, that if we go along with it, they will begin pushing for maximum limitations on Russia's influence." Conservatives also want something in return, he says. "What Russia wants...