Who Is Mr Putin

The strange case of Mr Putin and the disappearing carpet of turf

Bloggers in a provincial Russian town are investigating what happened to hundreds of strips of turf used to spruce up the town centre before a visit from the Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, which disappeared almost as soon as he left.

A video that has gained more than 50,000 views on YouTube claims to show how the city of Pskov, in north-west Russia, prepared for Mr Putin's visit late last month, with flowers planted, roads repaved, and hundreds of rolls of lush green turf laid out over muddy soil. A second video shows the city just after Mr Putin left, with the turf nowhere in sight. Bloggers joked that it could be special turf that travelled around Russia with Mr Putin; others suggested that local officials might have decided the grass would look nice at their country houses.

It is not the first "turf scandal" to hit Russia. Before Mr Putin's trip to the town of Saransk last week, local bloggers posted a video that appears to show workers spraying green paint onto muddy soil to give it the appearance of grass. A spokesman for the town's mayor said they weren't using paint, but a special "watering technique" that turned the ground green.

The turf stories fit into a long Russian tradition of "Potemkin villages", a term coined when Prince Grigory Potemkin apparently set up fake "model" villages to impress the Empress Catherine the Great on a trip to the Crimea in the 18th century.

Both Mr Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev travel frequently across Russia, and local bloggers often point out the lengths local administrators take to ensure the country's leaders leave their regions with good impressions. In late 2009, local journalists in the Siberian city of Omsk noted that a billboard advertising a theatre performance called "We are waiting for you, happy gnome!" was removed before a visit from Mr Medvedev. In December, a doctor from the city of Ivanovo called a televised phone-in session with Mr Putin to say that during the Prime Minister's recent visit to a local hospital, his bosses had borrowed new equipment from other hospitals and made some doctors pose as patients.

Mr Medvedev promised in April that he would in future make surprise trips to the regions and would punish local authorities who put on such fake shows.

Wikileaks, Mr.Putin and the Future of the EU-Russia Relationship ...

One of the latest Wikileaks that might cause a serious rift between friendly nations is the assumption by officials that Russia and Mr. Putin have a stronger relationship with organised crime within Russia and abroad that realised and that this relationship is often used to promote national goals. These accusations focus mostly on the sale of weapons to factional groups around the world that would be seen as intrusive if Russia sold weapons directly to these groups. The prohibition of the sale of the S-300 missile defence system and Russia supporting the actions against Iran shows stronger ties with the West, especially considering that the Iran situation is deteriorating daily. Despite strong reservations by EU officials, it is more likely that the Russia’s ties with Europe and the US will become reluctantly stronger than turn in the other direction, even with Bear bombers flying over the north Atlantic and thousands of weapons systems being sold and licensed to China.

The end of November highlighted many of the EU and NATO’s future ties with Russia and Europe’s view that while the Eurozone might fail, EU relations with Russia may blossom. At the NATO Summit in Lisbon at the end of November, a proposal by President Medvedev to have a joint missile defence system where Russia and NATO would mutually defend each other from missiles flying over and towards their territories was proposed with future intentions in mind. This proposal by Russia falls in line with the new push by Russia to have closer security ties, and as a logical result, economic ties with their European neighbours while the US struggles with their own internal issues and falls away from their allies in Europe and globally. A visa free zone and common economic concepts link with the proposed “Common Security Concepts” proposed by Russia to France and Germany as well as sweetening the pot for Europe to have access to Russian raw materials and fuel exports.

In addition to discussions of a deeper security relationship between Russia and non-Anglo European NATO, Vladimir Putin himself made overtures to creating a EU-Russia Union . This idea might not be so suspect as the EU moves towards expanding it ties with China, India, Brazil as well as working on an FTA with Canada and increasing their activities with current partners in the EU’s economic agreements such as with Mexico.

Russia's capitalist revolution, why market reform succeeded and democracy failed

The New York Times Almanac 2002

The Economist

Congressional Record

Congressional Record, V. 148, Pt. 13, September 20, 2002 to October 1, 2002