From Volume 7, Issue 41 of EIR Online, Published Oct. 7, 2008
Russia and the CIS News Digest

Russian State TV Airs LaRouche on Crash, FDR Solution

Oct. 5 (EIRNS)—The Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week) program on Russia's national TV Rossiya channel put American economist Lyndon LaRouche on the air today, in a segment about the current global financial meltdown. In excerpts from an interview with TV Rossiya correspondent Konstantin Syomin, LaRouche laid out the inevitability of the total demise of the current financial system, likely by the end of this year. The emergency alternative, said LaRouche in the broadcast, "would require that the United States would have to go to Russia, China, and India. If they agree on reorganizing the international financial-monetary system, we could solve the problem. This would mean going to a Roosevelt approach, to a kind of new Bretton Woods system."

Vesti Nedeli is the Sunday prime-time news round-up program on TV Rossiya, a state-owned channel whose regular viewing audience numbers 70 million people. Throughout today's program, anchorman Yevgeni Revenko drew attention to the proposals by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev for a new financial architecture.

Next week's issue of EIR Online will carry a full transcript of the broadcast.

Medvedev: 'New Global Financial and Economic System' Is Top Priority

Oct. 2 (EIRNS)—Russian President Dmitri Medvedev today declared that all other issues take a back seat to the need for consultations to create a new, just world financial system. He was speaking at a session of the St. Petersburg Dialogue forum, a Russian-German exchange at which his counterpart, Chancellor Angela Merkel, was present. The official topic of the meeting was "Russia and Germany in a globalizing world. Partnership for the modernization of society." Medvedev, keynoting the session, said, "I will list today's most important problems. First of all, the problems caused by the financial crisis. Everything else has been put on the back burner and has left the headlines. Europe and even the entire world are discussing nothing else."

Citing the inability of "one economy and one currency" to guide the world successfully, Medvedev continued, "We need collective solutions to resolve the financial crisis brought on by financial selfishness," as he himself had said at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum in June of this year. "We must work together to design a new and more equitable global financial and economic system that is based on multipolarity, the rule of law and the mutual respect of interests. Recent events have confirmed that no economy, however strong or powerful it may be, can assume the function of super-regulator. And the problems of any one of the largest, key financial players can become the problems of everyone else at any time, so we need new mechanisms for collective decision making and collective responsibility."

Russian Officials Scramble as Crisis Hits Financial Sector

Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—Russian stock market and banking turmoil continued into the week of Sept. 29. That Monday, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin devoted much of a special government session on Russia's long-term development, to a discussion of short-term measures. Noting that numerous Russian companies and banks have borrowed abroad, but now cannot roll over those loans because of the world credit crisis, Putin outlined additional measures, including special, central bank-backed refinancing lines of credit, to be made available through Vneshekonombank; additional unsecured central bank credits to companies; and additional central bank support for interbank lending. He ordered the government to come up with ways to "support Vneshekonombank," which is acting as an insurer and lender of last resort for banks operating on the stock market.

Additional unplanned measures were required the next day. Trading was suspended for two hours on the RTS and MICEX exchanges, after an over 8% drop in the first minute of trading. The Federal Financial Markets Service then allowed trading to resume, but only in certain categories, and with new rules that impose an even lower threshold to stop trading.

On Oct. 1, addressing the Cabinet about Russia's long-term socioeconomic development conception until 2020m, compared with, and government guidelines for 2009-12, Putin said that Russia "will neither change its development plans, nor put them off until some indefinite time," even as the government attempts to stabilize the country's finances with short-term measures.

Putin asserted that the crisis began in the U.S.A., and is systemic. While detailing the government's latest moves to support the Russian banking system through capitalizing a few major banks, he stressed that neither these measures, nor the country's currency reserves and other insurance capabilities, represent an adequate security cushion. "The main guarantee," said Putin, has to be a growing economy, with a financial credit system that relies chiefly on internal resources, "thus gaining strong immunity against global financial viruses." He went on to emphasize the priority areas of transport, energy, banking, and agriculture, and "building a national innovation system."

Lavrov Names Soros Role in Georgia; Backs Sarkozy on Financial Summit

Oct. 1 (EIRNS)—Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov highlighted the financial crisis at his UN address to the General Assembly on Sept. 27, supporting French President Nicolas Sarkozy's call for an international conference. "A special urgent attention and synergy of efforts is called for by the current financial crisis," Lavrov said.

At a press conference at the UN on Sept. 29 at the UN, Lavrov made explicit reference to the role of George Soros in "paying part of the government of Georgia," and told reporters Russia is "investigating" the role of Soros in Georgia, as part of a series of investigations into what really went on in the attack on South Ossetia—as opposed to lies put out by the Western media.

In an interview with Izvestia on Oct. 1, Lavrov summed up this year's UN session, saying it made clear that nations must pursue their "common interest" in the current crisis—"common interest," not "common values, of which our Western partners so liked to talk in the past few years." First priority of these interests, is "the necessity to protect the world economy from collapse and falling apart as a result of the financial crisis," Lavrov said. It is very important, he said, that today all countries return to socially oriented economic policies. The current system is failing, he said, and a solution can only be found through multilateral efforts. The United States cannot be excluded from this process, but it must be a participant with the same rights as all other nations, he said, despite being the strongest.

Putin Presses Question of Ukraine's Arming of Georgia

Oct. 3 (EIRNS)—Appearing today with Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after bilateral talks on a wide range of matters, including sensitive gas delivery arrangements, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pressed Tymoshenko on recent reports about direct involvement by Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko in arming the Saakashvili regime in Georgia, before and during its August attack on South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers. Yushchenko has pursued a bid to get Ukraine into NATO, in parallel with that of Saakashvili's Georgia. During the August fighting, he flew to Tbilisi to show solidarity with Saakashvili, the darling of George Soros and the British Foreign Office.

Izvestia asked a question regarding "documents which assert that Ukraine sold Georgia weapons, armaments, which [sales] were commissioned directly by Victor Yushchenko." Tymoshenko, who is in a fierce political fight with Yushchenko, replied that in Ukraine, all arms flows are under the President, not the Prime Minister. She said that the Ukrainian Supreme Rada (the parliament, which Yushchenko is threatening to dissolve, after Tymoshenko's party broke the majority coalition) has formed an investigatory commission, and she would prefer to address "such serious facts" only if they are confirmed. She said that any violations of the law would be dealt with.

Putin condemned weapons deliveries to areas of conflict. He said whoever decided to provide such supplies "made a very big mistake." If, moreover, the weapons were supplied during the war and were managed by Ukrainian technicians, "then this I have called a crime, because it means getting directly involved in an armed conflict and setting the Russian and Ukrainian peoples against each other. This is absolutely impermissible." He added that if it were confirmed, it would affect Russia's relations with anybody involved in authorizing such activity.

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