Putin Is A Commie After All

[FC]

Putin blasts U.S.

[donmarkey]

Putin blasts U.S.

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-Don

[karlunity]

Putin...I think he started out as KGB?

 

karl

[FC]

Yahoo must have deleted it. Putin is offering money for baby-making. Russia is losing 700,000 people per year (good for us).

He said that Russia must modernize their military to counter the United States. Them's fightin' words. He considers us too big for our britches.

Putin was a KGB big-wig.

 

I found the articles

MOSCOW - President Vladimir Putin took a swipe at the United States in his state of the nation address Wednesday, bristling at being lectured by Vice President Dick Cheney and comparing Washington to a wolf who "eats without listening."

 

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During an emotional moment in the nationally televised speech, Putin used the fairy-tale motif on the need to build a fortress-like house and to illustrate Russia's need to bolster its defenses. He also suggested that Washington puts its political interests above the democratic ideals it claims to cherish.

 

"Where is all this pathos about protecting human rights and democracy when it comes to the need to pursue their own interests? Here, it seems, everything is allowed, there are no restrictions whatsoever," Putin said, smiling sarcastically in the address to both houses of parliament.

 

"We are aware what is going on in the world," he said. "Comrade wolf knows whom to eat, he eats without listening, and he's clearly not going to listen to anyone."

 

Political analyst Alexei Makarkin told Ekho Moskvy radio the "wolf" reference was a response to the "United States, its actions in Iraq and plans toward Iran, its games on the territory of the CIS (former Soviet territory) and its criticism of Russia."

 

Putin's speech came nearly a week after Cheney on May 4 took a verbal slap at the Russian leader, saying the government sought "to reverse the gains of the last decade."

 

In another apparent barb aimed at the United States, Putin said countries should not use Russia's World Trade Organization membership negotiations to make unrelated demands.

 

"The negotiations for letting Russia into the WTO should not become a bargaining chip for questions that have nothing in common with the activities of this organization," Putin said.

 

In April, U.S. senators visiting Moscow said Russia's democracy record and its stance in the Iranian nuclear crisis would influence Congress as it considers Moscow's bid to join the global trade body.

 

Nationalist legislator Alexei Mitrofanov told reporters in the Kremlin that Putin's Russia was in no way looking for a confrontation with the West, "but we want to be a politically and economically independent state."

 

Putin pointed out that Russia's military budget is 25 times lower than that of the United States. Like the U.S., he said, "we also must make our house strong and reliable."

 

"We must always be ready to counter any attempts to pressure Russia in order to strengthen positions at our expense," he said. "The stronger our military is, the less temptation there will be to exert such pressure on us."

 

Putin said the government would work to strengthen the nation's nuclear deterrent as well as conventional military forces without repeating the mistakes of the Cold War era, when a costly arms race with Washington drained Soviet resources.

 

He said Russia would soon commission two nuclear submarines equipped with the new Bulava intercontinental ballistic missiles — the nation's first since Soviet times — while the land-based strategic missile forces would get their first unit of mobile Topol-M missiles.

 

The new missiles and warheads, which can foil defenses by changing direction in flight, would allow Russia to preserve a strategic balance without denting the nation's economic development goals, he said, adding that Russia needs a military that is capable of answering all modern challenges.

 

Two-thirds of the army will be professionals instead of conscripts by 2008, he said, allowing the state to reduce the length of obligatory service from two years to one, and nearly 600 rapid-response units will be formed by 2011.

 

"We need a military that is able simultaneously to carry on battle in global, regional and, if need be, several local conflicts," he said.

 

The military should be able to guarantee Russia's territorial integrity, he said — a reference to the threat of Islamic extremists in southern regions surrounding Chechnya. He said the threat of terrorism remained significant, and that "extremists of all stripes" feed off of local and religious conflicts.

 

"I know that someone very much wants Russia to get bogged down in these problems and, as a result, to be unable to solve a single one of its problems of full-scale development," he said darkly without identifying the foe.

 

Turning to health care issues, Putin called the demographic slide that has shrunk Russia's population by millions since the 1991 Soviet collapse "the most acute problem of contemporary Russia," and he encouraged legislators to budget for more generous birth bonuses, childcare support subsidies and educational benefits for mothers to encourage women to have children.

 

"I am convinced that with such an approach, you will earn words of gratitude from millions of mothers, young families, all the citizens of our country," Putin said.

 

He also called on more Russians to take in foster children from institutions where about 200,000 orphans and abandoned children are interned.

 

Most Russian families are small, with couples usually having only one or two children. Putin and his wife have two daughters.

 

Russia's population dropped by about 4 percent to 142.7 million between 1993 and 2006, according to the Health Ministry. Experts attribute the plunge to post-Soviet economic turmoil that has badly hurt the state health care system, leading to a drop in birth rates and life expectancy. Increased poverty, alcoholism, soaring crime and emigration have also taken their toll, leading to an average life expectancy of just 66 years — 16 years lower than Japan and 14 years lower than the European Union average.

 

The ITAR-Tass news agency reported that the comments on reversing the population decline prompted 27 bursts of applause and that listeners in all applauded 47 times — more than in any of Putin's other state of the nation addresses.

 

___ By Richard Balmforth

Wed May 10, 4:45 PM ET

 

 

 

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin offered couples cash to have more children to halt a dramatic decline in population and called for a stronger army in a key speech on Wednesday in which he shrugged off sharp attacks by Washington.

 

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Putin, defying predictions he would focus on foreign policy, zeroed in on Russia's dwindling population -- an issue with huge implications for the economy -- which is falling by 700,000 people every year.

 

In his annual speech to the nation, the president, who in July hosts leaders of the G8 group of rich democracies, responded only obliquely to stinging criticism from the White House of his democracy record.

 

"Not everyone in the world has been able to move on from the stereotypes of bloc thinking and prejudices which are a carry-over from the epoch of global confrontation, though there have been fundamental changes in the world," he said.

 

U.S.-Russian relations, which have been unusually warm under Putin, hit their coldest moment last week when Vice President Dick Cheney accused Moscow of backsliding on democracy and using its vast energy resources as a tool for "intimidation and blackmail" against its neighbors.

 

President George W. Bush, who will next meet Putin in St Petersburg in July, followed up by saying in a German newspaper that Russia was giving out "mixed signals" on democracy.

 

VEILED WARNING

 

On Iran, Putin again sidestepped open criticism, making only a veiled warning to Washington not to take military action against Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

 

Putin said Russia stood "unambiguously" for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons in the world.

 

But, in an apparent reference to the tension between the United States and Iran, he said: "Methods of force rarely give the desired result and often their consequences are even more terrible than the original threat."

 

Moscow finds itself at odds with the West in the U.N. Security Council over how to respond to Tehran's refusal to end uranium enrichment which can yield fuel for power generation or for nuclear weapons. Iran rejects Western accusations and insists it is interested only in the former.

 

Putin sets great store by his personal friendship with the U.S. President whose country holds the key to Russia's eventual entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO).

 

But Putin said Russia would join the WTO on its own terms and in its own economic interests. He answered U.S. concerns about rampant video, music and software piracy -- but was silent on Washington's demand for foreign banks to be allowed to open branches in Russia rather than subsidiaries.

 

Russia fears its weak banking system could be wiped out by foreign rivals if it yields on that point.

 

MORE BABIES PLEASE

 

His proposal to boost the birthrate is Putin's first real attempt to tackle a catastrophic demographic decline in the world's biggest country.

 

Describing the issue as contemporary Russia's most acute problem, he told Russian couples he would more than double to 1,500 roubles ($55.39) monthly payouts to families for the first baby and then double that to 3,000 roubles for a second child.

 

Average wages are below $100 a week.

 

The trend is driven by low life expectancy, particularly among men, due to poor diet, heavy drinking and smoking.

 

If it continues, officials say today's population of around 143 million will be down to 100 million by the middle of the century, translating into a weaker workforce and smaller army.

 

"We are talking about love, about women, about children, about the family," Putin said.

 

"The problem of low birth rates cannot be resolved without a change in the attitude of our society toward the issue of family and family values," he said.

 

Deferring to another powerful pillar of the Russian establishment, just a day after the 61st anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany by Soviet forces, Putin said Russia needed armed forces capable of responding to modern threats.

 

"We ... must build our own house, strong and reliable, according to what we see is going on in the world," he said.