MOSCOW, May 10 (RIA Novosti) - The authorities and business have failed to justify the hopes that Russians had in them in the early 1990s, President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.
"Citizens' have a low level of trust in individual institutions of power and big business," Putin said in his annual state of the nation address. "Millions of people pinned great hopes on the reforms of the early 1990s. However, neither the authorities, nor business justified these hopes. Moreover, some representatives of these institutions, by ignoring the norms of law and morals, profited personally at the expense of the majority of Russian citizens, which were unprecedented cases in the history of Russia."
