MOSCOW, May 7 (RIA Novosti) – President Vladimir Putin slammed regional leaders on Tuesday over their failure to transfer allocated budget funds to medical workers, quoting in the process a song by Soviet singer-songwriter Vladimir Vysotsky.
“Did we allocate the funds? We did. Did we trick you? We didn’t. Did they get to the regions? They did. But not to medical workers,” Putin said at a meeting with government ministers.
“Where’s the money, Zin?" Putin added. “Do you remember those amazing words?”
The song quoted by Putin was Vysotsky’s “Dialogue around the television,” in which a harassed husband answers his wife’s pleas for a new top with the words “Where’s the money, Zin?”
The song is one of the best known by Vysotsky, a legendary Soviet poet, singer-songwriter, film and theater actor.
