Russian Presdient Vladimir Putin (right) and Krasnodar Territory Governor Alexander Tkachev discussed the harvest on the beaches of the Black Sea.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
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They Complain to Putin about the Stuffiness
// The heads of Dagestan and Krasnodar Territory visit the president
Dagestan's leader Mukhu Aliev and Governor of Krasnodar Territory Alexander Tkachev met with Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday. The regional leaders, from opposite sides of the Southern Federal District, shared their understandings of the complicated tasks they face on the military front, in Aliev's case, and in peacetime, in Tkachev's. Kommersant special correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov has the details from the president's Sochi residence.
Aliev told the president about “tendencies and changes in the situation in the republic toward the better.” He did not mention that they were connected with there are new people among the republic's leaders, although it would be hard not to make that connection.
“Where are those changes seen?” he asked rhetorically as Putin watched him silently. “Mainly, there were significantly fewer terrorist acts in Dagestan as compared to last year and the year before. There were fewer victims of terrorist acts among employees of law enforcement agencies and other organizations. A victim is a victim. It is all hard, but they have a somewhat different character compared to the ones we had last year and the year before. There used to be direct attacks on law enforcement – on roads, in military units – but today the victims are more often connected with our workers discovering where the bandits are located from intelligence sources or the public and there are the unavoidable casualties in the course of their neutralization or they are the results of not very professional preparations for the operations.”
Aliev made an important observation. While he attributed the changes in tactics to law enforcement, it could be said that the militants changed tactics. They now prefer not to attack fortified military units, where the soldiers can defend themselves, or wait cold and hungry for the police in ditches. Instead they use the services of local residents who, for a moderate fee (from both sides), tell the police where to go to get shot at.
Aliev mentioned that eight terrorist acts had been prevented and noted the more active role of the public in security. In addition, 15 militants have taken advantage of the amnesty announced by FSB director Nikolay Patrushev, and more were expected. Five apartment houses for officers and six dormitories for soldiers have been built in Botlikh (although Patrushev, who appeared in the same room an hour later, said that construction was not completed, and one building had not even been started there). Gasification was also proceeding successfully. Anyone who had never been there would find that description of Dagestan quite appealing.
Krasnodar Territory Governor Tkachev was the president's next guest. After requesting that the air conditioning be turned on (something the president normally strenuously objected to), the governor reported cheerfully that the harvest was underway in Kuban “in the fields and on the beach.” “In the resorts,” he added after the president refused to get the joke. Tkachev said that there were 12 million tourists this year, as opposed to 10 million last year. He said that the upswing came at the expense of Turkey and Cyprus, since Russians prefer their own country, language and cuisine. He also made the extremely dubious claim that the level of service was higher in Russia.
Tkachev then spoke about the upcoming competition for recreational economic free zones and the opportunities provided by Sochi, Anapa, Gelendzhik and Tuapse. Moving on to agriculture, he noted that the last winter was the coldest “probably in 100 years,” with temperatures of -35 degrees Celsius, but the grain harvest was nearly at the level of last year's, at 44 centners per hectare. He praised the “elements of market agrarian economy that have recently appeared on the Russian market,” probably referring to the federal funds granted for the realization of the national project in agriculture. The idea that those elements are “recent,” of course, contradicts the official account of agricultural development.
Andrey Kolesnikov
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 30, 2006
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