Putin is ready to replace long-serving allies with trusted younger people before the 2018 presidential election, an official said Tuesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because he isn’t authorized to discuss Kremlin matters.
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Yakunin’s achievements at Russian Railways are “far from rosy and, given Russia’s turn to the east, it’s obvious that there must be more active development of rail links to China and the Asian part of Russia“, Evgeniy Minchenko, head of the international Institute for Political Expertise in Moscow, said by phone on Tuesday. ‘It is a galleon that was transporting civilian cargo through the bay of Balaclava, ‘ Putin said. Approval ratings were just under 90 per cent as Russian state-run media has intensified his promotion since Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to join Russia in February 2014. “The Russian economic minister has suggested that possibly 60 of those 83 regions are in crisis mode at this time, and there’s even speculation that 20 of them are already defaulting on their debt, even though the government itself doesn’t want to make it really public yet”, Goodrich says. “Otherwise, the economy will simply become catastrophic”.
Off the vessel, Putin was greeted by Medvedev, who did give him a hug, and also by his chief of staff and defense minister.
In the first three months of this year the number of Russian tourists going abroad fell by 40 percent compared to the same period last year, Rostourism reported, citing Rosstat. He is planning to stand for election as senator for Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania.
Putin says it would be good for Crimea to follow Russian example where “people of different nationalities live peacefully”.
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Outgoing Kaliningrad Governor Nikolai Tsukanov, who forced a by-election by filing for early retirement in June, nominated Yakunin as his potential successor. “If they are too pushy in asking for more help from the state budget, they can share Yakunin’s fate”, he said.
