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‘We aren’t looking for enemies,’ Putin says in annual speech
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State-of-nation address focuses on aiding economic recovery
Putin: We Are Ready to Work With President Trump
Russian President Vladimir Putin said he’s ready to work with U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump’s new administration on an equal basis, as he urged joint efforts to fight terrorism in his annual state-of-the-nation speech.
“We are ready for cooperation with the new U.S. administration,” Putin said in the Kremlin on Thursday before an audience of both houses of parliament and top officials as well as religious and business leaders. “It is important to normalize and start developing bilateral ties on an equal and mutually beneficial basis.”
Trump’s election has raised hopes in Moscow for better ties after he said he’d be willing to consider lifting sanctions imposed over Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. With Russia’s economy mired in its longest recession in two decades, plunging millions into poverty and battering the middle class, Putin’s immediate hopes of returning the economy to strong growth rest largely on higher oil prices and progress in removing the sanctions imposed by the U.S and the European Union.The front-runner in France’s presidential elections in April, former Prime Minister Francois Fillon, has been critical of the EU’s sanctions. Russia, the world’s largest crude exporter, got a boost from a deal Wednesday among OPEC members on their first production cuts in eight years, which sent oil prices almost 10 percent higher.
‘Need Friends’
Putin, who’s welcomed Trump’s offer of partnership in fighting Islamic State in Syria, where government forces backed by Russia are advancing against rebels in Aleppo, also expressed hope of a better relationship with European countries.
“Unlike some of our foreign colleagues, who see Russia as an opponent, we aren’t looking for enemies and never have done, we need friends,” Putin said. “But we won’t allow our interests to be infringed.”
His conciliatory tone marked a sharp contrast with last year’s speech, when Putin lashed out at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erodogan after his air force shot down a Russian warplane near the border with Syria.
The tide has now turned in the Syrian conflict in favor of Putin’s ally, President Bashar al-Assad, whose grip on the Middle East country is increasing as Trump seems set to cut back support for rebel groups and focus U.S. efforts on fighting Islamic State.
Economic Plan
The Russian leader, who devoted much of his more than hour-long speech to the economy as he prepares to seek re-election in early 2018, blamed domestic factors for holding up growth, including a lack of investment, inadequate competition and shortcomings in the business climate.
There’ll be an “insignificant” decline in Russia’s economy this year after a contraction of 3.7 percent in 2015, Putin said. Inflation should end the year at a record low of less than 6 percent, then slow to the central bank’s 4 percent target in 2017, he said. The country’s difficulties over the last two years have only made it stronger, he said.
Putin ordered the government to produce an economic development plan to 2025 by May, which by 2019-2020 should already enable the country to “grow above the global level and thus to boost Russia’s position in the world economy.”
Russia’s economic recovery is likely to be “subdued,” with growth of 1.1 percent in 2017, the International Monetary Fund said this week. Expansion of gross domestic product in Russia may reach 3.5 percent annually by 2025, Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said Thursday, state news service TASS reported.
Survivalist on Thu, 1st Dec 2016 4:58 pm
This article states that Russia is the largest crude exporter. I thought it was Saudi Arabia.
dissident on Thu, 1st Dec 2016 5:15 pm
You are right. They mixed up production with exports. Russia consumes around a third of what it produces.
makati1 on Thu, 1st Dec 2016 6:50 pm
It’s Bloomberg. You don’t expect accuracy or even facts, do you?
Davy on Thu, 1st Dec 2016 7:03 pm
If you are a financial illiterate you will have a problem with Bloomberg. Big boys are capable of wading through the swamp to find a tasty morsel of news. Grow up and grow some
makati1 on Thu, 1st Dec 2016 7:47 pm
As I said, Bloomberg is bullshit in huge amounts. “Financial intelligence” has nothing to do with it. Economists are a perfect example that financial intelligence does NOT exist. Only greed.
Anonymous on Fri, 2nd Dec 2016 12:20 am
The president is bound to be disappointed when he learns the ‘donald’ couldn’t help Russia fight the USlamic even if he wanted to. Of course, I understand what the President is doing here. He understands full well the uS IS the terrorists sugar daddy, and he hopes to force the uS’s hand by publicly imploring the uS to ‘fight’ its own proxy force. If they don’t, they look the bad guys(they are). If they do, they get caught playing a double game attacking their own tools.
The trump, of course, being the political newbie he is, hasn’t had it explained to him yet that the ‘ISIS’, is a USraeli military asset. trump for this part, likely still beleives the descriptions of the USlamic state that CNN and faux-news push on everyone, might even be on-board with the Presidents plan. At least, until he CIA and friends stop by to school the idiot in the WH that the USlamic state is off-limits. Oh, trump can make all the ANTI-USlamic statements to the controlled media in the US he wants, he will even be encouraged to do so, but actually attacking them?, alongside Russia? No…..
The anti-USlamic coalition (Russia-Iran-Syria), will be grind ‘ISIS’ down in the field, while the uS keeps trying to play its double game, pretending to want to ‘defeat’* them, while actively undermining Russia and Syria’s efforts to rid their country of them. It will get interesting once the USlamic state is gone, because Syria will understandably, want the turkish apes off their territory as well, along with their US special farces buddies.
*The uS’s principle strategy to ‘defeat’ the ISISraeli terrorists, mostly consists of issuing press releases and giving interviews to its state-run media telling everyone how badly they want to see ‘ISIS’ defeated.
Davy on Fri, 2nd Dec 2016 5:09 am
It must be such a letdown for the anti-American “rabids” the thought that Russia and the US “may” initiate a détente. I have not heard much whining lately from you know who about the Russian/Chinese alliance and how they were going to NUK the US into oblivion. What about the Bric renaissance or the powerful new China’s investment bank. Hell the dollar was supposed to be dead months ago. It is so fun to watch reality squash these extremist’s dreams. What new extreme view of the world will the boy wonder or the old man and the club med dream up next?
Apneaman on Fri, 2nd Dec 2016 9:18 am
Putin playing PR games. I’m sure he is clever enough to know Trump is a lifelong lying sack of shit.
Wall Street Wins Again as Trump Picks Bankers, Billionaires
-Mnuchin would be third Goldman Treasury secretary since 1990s
-‘I think Donald Trump conned them,’ says hedge fund manager
“After Donald Trump ridiculed Wall Street on the campaign trail, the President-elect tapped former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. executive Steven Mnuchin to be his Treasury secretary and billionaire investor Wilbur Ross to lead the Commerce Department. Trump even met with Goldman Sachs President Gary Cohn inside Trump Tower.
It would suit Tilson just fine if voters who backed Trump because he promised to rein in Wall Street are furious now that he’s surrounding himself with bankers and billionaires.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-30/wall-street-wins-again-as-trump-chooses-bankers-and-billionaires