MOSCOW, November 8 (RIA Novosti)
Moskovsky Komsomolets
Pharmacy Shooter Could Have Killed More
Dmitry Vinogradov, who stands accused of killing five people, worked out his ammunition needs carefully. He was wearing a combat vest with several inside and outside pockets. He had cartridge holders placed conveniently for fast reloads and a combat knife for backup. The shooter was prepared for a serious battle.
Vinogradov’s ammunition and clothes suggest he had a massacre in mind. The shooter was armed with two shotguns: an Italian Benelli and a Russian Vepr 12. An anonymous source from the police department told MK that, despite the fact most of the shooting took place at close range, there is evidence that Vinogradov’s shooting skills were well developed. Almost all the shells struck their targets. The accused killer was prepared to move quickly and easily. It appears likely that the pharmacy shooter intended to carry out a much more deadly show.
“We can be sure he learned how to shoot with a pro and that he knows how to use weapons,” the source said. “If someone plans to kill only five defenseless people in a small room he won’t bring two shotguns and so much ammunition. Evidently, Vinogradov had planned to gun down everyone on the premises. He was firing point-blank and people had nowhere to run, so he had enough to kill everyone. It’s a miracle anyone was able to stop him.”
One theory is that the murder spree was motivated by jealousy. Unhappy in love and mentally distressed, Dmitry Vinogradov said humanity was “a cancer on this earth.” His hate manifesto is now the most discussed blog entry online. Distressingly, the Russian Breivik already has online fans.
Izvestia
Government Decides to Drop Pension Co-funding Program
The widely hyped program for state pension co-funding has been declared a failure and will stop accepting new participants on October 1, 2013, it was decided at a meeting chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, Izvestia reports. The program, in which 9.5 million Russians are participating, will not even see its fifth anniversary.
The program, unofficially known as “1,000 for 1,000,” was launched on January 1, 2009. Basically, the program says that if an individual makes voluntary contributions (as distinct from an employer’s contributions), that the state will match the amount ruble for ruble. The government promised to contribute between 2,000 rubles and 12,000 rubles a year over the course of ten years. Over the four years that the program has been running, participants have paid more than 12 billion rubles into it, a Russian Pension Fund spokesperson told Izvestia.
Currently there are over 9.4 million individual contributors. Pension Fund officials say that more than 3 billion rubles have been contributed to the program since the beginning of this year – or over 650 million rubles more than in the same period last year.
About 10 billion rubles from the federal budget were allocated to the program during the program’s first three years. In the first year the state contributed 2.5 billion rubles, 3.4 billion in 2010, and 3.86 billion in 2011, the fund’s spokesman said.
It is still possible to become a program contributor before October 1, 2013. The program will remain in operation for 10 years after that for current participants and those who join before the deadline.
Sergei Smirnov, director of the Institute of Social Policy and Socio-Economic Programs of the Higher School of Economics, believes the program was an attempt to cut the Pension Fund deficit, or to meet part of it with today’s contributions.
But the plan also leads to the growth of deferred obligations which the fund will have to honor in the future.
The program, however, has failed to receive broad support from the nation’s 70 million employed individuals, with fewer than 13 percent taking advantage of it, said Smirnov.
A source familiar with the program added that the official statistics – 9.4 million members – include anyone who ever made a single payment. An estimated one million people have dropped out of the program, the source said.
The program failed to take into account the interests of its potential participants, says Smirnov. He says people who are in a position to contribute more than 2,000 rubles a month are not interested in the program because the real increase in their pension benefit will amount to just 300 or 400 rubles a month in real terms. They can just as easily put the money in a bank account. At the other end of the spectrum, people who would most benefit from the matching funds find it hard to spare even 1,000 rubles from their family budget, says Smirnov.
Novaya Gazeta
Putin’s System of Power Crumbles
Distributing political, management, economic and financial power to close friends is an unwise approach and an inadequate method of governance. In the case of Putin, it was bound to result in political and economic failure or, more likely, in corruption scandals. The dismissal of Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov is just the beginning.
Other problems include Vladimir Putin’s total mistrust of his inner circle, which is fraught with infighting, and the limited number of acceptable replacements for it. Like Stalin, Putin mistrusts the system he has created.
This is why he should not give the defense minister post to a friend or someone in the military, especially when defense spending is up, because it is nothing but an enticement to embezzlement. The decision to move Sergei Shoigu from Moscow Region governor to the defense ministry is evidence of barely contained hysterics. Most likely, it was an impromptu move to appoint an effective manager.
The logic behind this less-than-irreproachable decision points to the nascent self-destruction of the system, which has turned out to be insolvent politically, economically and managerially. A dishonest politician cannot be an honest manager. The potential for authoritarian rule was exhausted by the end of Putin’s first presidential term, and he has at long last become aware of this bitter fact. But he only has himself to blame.
This is a result of his mistrust of democracy, of the rotation of power and of public control. The dismissal of Serdyukov, who was seen as one of the few ministers doing something other than squandering budgetary funds, has fully discredited his attempts to streamline the ministry’s obsolete financial system. Besides which, Serdyukov has not achieved his main goals: changing the system of recruiting and creating a contract army.
Who’s next? Whose misdeeds will provoke the wrath of the system’s chief architect? It hardly matters: the system needs changing, not the ministers.
There are two explanations for Serdyukov’s dismissal. The official (but unlikely) version is his connection to the fraud case involving Oboronprom, the aerospace company accountable to the Defense Ministry. The unofficial version is that Serdyukov is being punished for deserting his wife, who is the daughter of former prime minister Viktor Zubkov. But this new excuse was put forward so crudely that it makes us think the real reason must be different and more serious.
What comes to mind is the possibility that the minister had huge funds at his disposal and used part of them to buy armaments. The largest deal signed during his term was the purchase of Mistral helicopter carriers from France.
According to this newspaper’s information, the Federal Security Service scrutinized the deal and reportedly concluded that it did great damage to the country’s finances and defense efforts. The service also allegedly traced corruption to Serdyukov and his superiors. If this is true, then Serdyukov is merely a pawn and we will soon see scandals the likes of which have not been seen in recent Russian history
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