In a startling admission, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Tuesday said Russia was run by corrupt officials and many of its businessmen did nothing but live off the sale of raw materials.
Speaking to the Valdai discussion group of Russia experts, Medvedev said his country was on a “road to nowhere,” relying on exports of oil, gas and metals and could not hide from the pressing need for economic and social reform.
Russia relies on natural resources for most of its exports and government revenues. Sharp falls in world commodity prices in the wake of the financial crisis have hit the Russian economy hard, exposing how little it has diversified.
Medvedev next May reaches the midpoint of his four-year term in office. Critics are complaining that his talk of reforms and modernization is not being matched by deeds. In some areas, such as corruption, businessmen say the situation is getting worse.
During a two-and-a-half-hour lunch with the Valdai Group at a luxury shopping center on Red Square, Medvedev reserved his harshest comments for corruption among officials.
“Corrupt officials run Russia. They have the true power in Russia,” he said.
“Corruption has a systemic nature, deep historic roots,” he said. “We should squeeze it out. The battle isn’t easy, but it has to be fought.”
Some of those listening said these were explosive comments from a man normally viewed as the junior partner in the ruling “tandem” of president and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
Medvedev was picked by Putin to succeed him in the Kremlin, but most analysts in Moscow agree that Putin continues to take the key decisions from his desk as prime minister.
“It is absolutely amazing and could anger a lot of people,” said Reinhard Krumm, head of the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation in Moscow of Medvedev’s comments.
“But I am very doubtful he can do anything. He reminds me of [former Soviet leader] Mikhail Gorbachev, who began talking about the necessity of reform but couldn’t follow through.”
Medvedev also lashed out at some of the country’s powerful billionaire oligarchs. Many businessmen in Russia “did nothing” he said “other than sell raw materials.”
“We need to change the business model, the business mentality,” he said.
The break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 spawned a new generation of billionaires who profited from taking possession of highly profitable state assets, much of it in the oil and steel sectors.
The financial crisis, however, has weakened their grip on the economy and exposed the fact that many oligarchs did little more than live off the rents from extractive industries and borrow heavily in order to grow their empires through acquisitions.
The sudden halt to foreign lending last year hit the more heavily indebted oligarchs hard and has made them vulnerable to attempts by the state to take back some of their assets.
Russian public opinion is strongly against the oligarchs, so political moves against them are popular.
Medvedev’s G20 sherpa and top economic adviser Arkady Dvorkovich said at the weekend ordinary people would survive the crisis, the oligarchs would not.
But Russia experts said they doubted Medvedev’s increasing strong language on corruption and reform would be matched by effective deeds before his term expires in 2012.
Harvard academic Timothy Colton said Medvedev would struggle to deliver on his pledges.
Corruption in Russia has actually increased since 2000, Transparency International said, and the country is near the bottom of the organization’s list of transparent countries.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to