By Vestnik Kavkaza
The television rating of the presidential address to the Federal Assembly has grown, at least in Moscow. December 12, the annual address by Vladimir Putin was seen by about 37% of the Moscow audience . Putin touched on the development of eastern Russia, criticized officials for failing to carry out his decrees and called the export of traditional values the main task of Russia.
The chairman of the party "Civic Platform", Mikhail Prokhorov, a billionaire who has lost to Putin in the fight for the presidency in March 2012 , said to VK: " I see here three relevant issue. The first relates to the development of Siberia and the Far East. "Civic Platform" has said many times that we need to provide incentives to new businesses. And now a very important innovation has been sounded: this is the tax return from the federal budget to the regions, and this concerns the money that has been invested in infrastructure. This is an important innovation, as well as a five-year "tax holiday" for new businesses, including a tax on mining. This is an important innovation.
The second issue is the fight against offshore companies. It is the international trend of leading powers. I only want to cool the hot heads not crossing the middle ground. The offshore companies are quite useful. It is important that they should show the effectiveness of legislation. If we are too cautious in this fight, our borrowers will leave. They can go to foreign banks, and the Russian banking system will suffer.
And the third issue which is the most important for me is the land reform and affordable housing. We had a separate program, and we talked about it a lot. And the fact that the president speaks about it is a very good sign".
According to film director, chairman of the Duma Committee on Culture Stanislav Govorukhin, " I was most impressed and pleased by his words on education and culture. How many years have we listened to this message? Twenty years! At first, the President in his annual address to the Federal Assembly did not mention culture in general, and then some words about the culture began to appear, but as a rule, in the end. It is also funded as a residual. And for the first time the annual message began with the issues of education and culture. In recent years we have seen how the country's leadership pays attention to culture. President met personally with the filmmakers, museum staff, librarians and writers. Now education and culture become a priority of state policy. "
State Duma deputy , member of the Russian Television Academy Olga Timofeyeva said that "the most important message is that the orders will be fulfilled to the letter. We will not revise our purposes or make any references to the fact that we have no money or no opportunities. All Putin’s campaign promises will be fulfilled. A week ago we said: "Vladimir Vladimirovich, note that sometimes the words of the officials are, to put it mildly, cunning , because the situation has not changed". And in the message we have heard it".
Yevgeny Minchenko, director of the International Institute of Political Expertise, told VK that this was the best message of the president: "On the one hand, we see here clear ideological conservatism, a restrained and at the same time very independent foreign policy and a set of very specific proposals on economic development, territorial development. I think there is a very good measure for the development of the Far East, and this is the merit of Alexander Halushko, who could, even as a newly-appointed official, lobbied for supporting these measures. There is a good initiative of tax benefits for regions that create business parks and similar business support systems.
There is a good subject of professional standards, with professional training within actual production, technological and environmental standards, with direct government support for specific technology platforms.
I can say that Russian business lobbyists, and this concerns both large business and innovations, this time have really done a good job. In particular, I think the Agency of Strategic Initiatives has contributed to it a lot. Now, having listened to this message, I understand that Putin knowingly praised the ASI. We used to have a different line on the national question before. We said that we do not need conflicts which are due to malicious Russian nationalists. Now the position is different: there are intemperate young people from the south, and there is the responsibility of their leaders, generally their republics that have to instruct them, there are corrupted law-enforcement agencies, and there are the so-called "Russian nationalists", not just "Russian nationalists" but "so-called" ones, i.e. it is assumed that there are also good Russian nationalists, and the bad ones try to arrange bloody massacres. We also do not approve of them. In my opinion, there is obvious progress".
