EDITORIAL
Putin is Drowning in his own Sewage
For the Russian Kremlin to balance its annual budget this year, the price of crude oil must average $123 per barrel.
It’s an astounding fact. No other member of the G-8, and no member of BRIC, depends for budget solvency on the price of a commodity which is set abroad. Russia is, quite simply, not its own nation.
But there’s an even more horrifying reality for Vladimir Putin to face: So far this year, the price of crude oil has actually averaged $78 per barrel — and just $75 per barrel this month. That’s a whopping 40% less than the budget requires.
Vladimir Putin is drowning in the fetid sewage of his own economic mismanagement.
Russia now finds itself in a wicked economic vice. As the price of oil falls, its budgetary revenues fall along with it, and Russia needs to borrow to make up the difference. But international creditors see that Russia’s oil revenues, and hence its income, are falling, and as a result they raise the interests rates they charge Russia at exactly the wrong time for Russia.
The price of oil has plummeted 13% since its April high, and by the end of the year Russia will have virtually exhausted its budgetary reserve fund, which was down by one-third in July compared to its value at the end of last year. What’s more, Russia’s income is not only imperiled by falling world oil prices, but also by the dire impact of Russia’s wildfire crisis, which has severely undermined Russia’s agricultural base.
The dictator Putin, and Russia itself, stand exposed. On the one hand the Putin economy is crumbling and on the other, as we report in today’s issue, the crude KGB regime is quickly resorting to the most barbaric levels of violence in order to keep the lid on dissent, just as in Soviet times. It didn’t work then, and it won’t work now. Russia is headed for another collapse.
La Russophobe 
Meanwhile, Putins lies are catching up with hime in another sector of the economy:
Driven To Distraction: Putin’s Lada Stunt Backfires
September 02, 2010
By RFE/RL
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has spent much of the summer cultivating his image as a rugged leader, one day out in the wild tracking bears, the next chasing a gray whale in choppy seas off the country’s Far East coast.
This week, Putin delivered his latest macho stunt — a 2,000-kilometer drive across Siberia in a canary-yellow Lada Kalina, intended to boost Russia’s flailing car industry and his own ratings ahead of a possible presidential comeback.
Putin was full of praise for the little Kalina, calling it “comfortable” and “reliable.” He recommended that all Russians — especially those currently driving Japanese cars — buy one.
“You won’t regret it,” Putin promised.
Three In One
But it wasn’t an altogether smooth ride.
An amateur video of Putin’s ride featuring not one but three identical Lada Kalinas, one of them on a tow truck, is making the rounds on the Internet.
The clip, in which onlookers burst into raucous laughter, has received almost 300,000 hits since it was posted on August 30.
“A third one is coming!” an onlooker is heard saying. “It broke down. He wore it out! Ah, Kalina…”
Semyon Shifrin, one of the car buffs who shot the clip, tells RFE/RL he had “nothing against the prime minister.” But he dismissed Putin’s Lada stunt as laughable.
“We didn’t expect to see as many as three of these much-advertised Lada Kalinas. It made us laugh,” he says. “If they want to promote this car, why take three of them on the trip? Putin is a grown man. He can make repairs himself if something breaks. He could even turn this into a PR stunt.”
The footage stands in sharp contrast with official Russian television reports, which showed a lone Putin riding his Lada across the vast Siberian expanses.
In addition to the three yellow Lada Kalinas, the clip also features huge numbers of official vehicles accompanying Putin. Shifrin says he stopped counting after 100.
The Russian government has already spent huge amounts in state aid to keep the Lada’s manufacturer, Avtovaz, afloat. Many of the clip’s viewers now denounce yet another expensive campaign to improve the poor image of Lada vehicles, which remain the butt of numerous jokes.
Tit For Tat
While Russian television has kept the embarrassing video under wraps, Belarus has not missed the chance to take revenge for a series of recent Russian television films discrediting Belarusian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka.
Belarusian national television channel ONT on August 31 aired a biting report mocking Putin’s road trip, marking a new low in already tense relations between Moscow and Minsk:
“The Internet is just swamped with criticism of Russian-made cars,” the report says. “Even the Kalina made for Putin could not cope with the 350-kilometer stretch. It had to be replaced after breaking down.”
This is not the first time Putin has personally stepped in to defend the maligned Lada brand, with arguable success.
The prime minister last year publicly heaped praise on his newly purchased Lada Niva jeep. The move could have given the Niva a much-needed publicity boost had Putin not admitted in January that his jeep had a customized German-made engine.
http://www.rferl.org/content/Driven_To_Distraction_Putins_Lada_Stunt_Backfires/2146662.html
we like your reposted 5screeners, keep on:) we read them carefully!
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
There’s no “we” Dima, only you.
Is it eligible to report typos using comments? It seems “one” is missed here: “On the hand the Putin economy […]”.
LA RUSSOPHOBE RESPONDS:
Thanks, fixed!
You should never correct what the Department of the State says, don’t you know? State Dept does not make mistakes.