As Gazprom Goes, So Goes Russia

[depakid]

As the Kremlin tries to regain influence, the energy giant Gazprom is ballooning. In February, a worker in central Russia helped prepare a pipeline to bring natural gas from Siberia to market.

ON a frigid evening in February, the hottest place to be here was the Kremlin Palace theater. The draw inside the towering hall wasn’t Tina Turner or Deep Purple — rock icons well past their prime — but Gazprom, Russia’s most powerful corporate leviathan, which was celebrating its 15th anniversary.

Gazprom certainly had reason to party: its chairman, Dmitri A. Medvedev, was riding high on the Russian campaign trail as the hand-picked successor of President Vladimir V. Putin. Although Gazprom forked over a handsome sum to book Ms. Turner and Deep Purple, Mr. Medvedev’s favorite band, the opportunity for the company, the world’s biggest producer of natural gas, to have its own man installed as Russia’s next leader was priceless.

“The gig at the Kremlin was fun, but it wasn’t wild,” Ian Gillan, Deep Purple’s frontman, wrote in an article for The Times of London after the show. “The young guys and more junior staff were all up on their feet, although they were looking nervously over at their bosses to see whether they could loosen their ties. It was as if they were asking, ‘How much fun are we allowed to have?’ ”

Mr. Medvedev was sworn in as president on Wednesday, after winning the election in early March, and his ascent confirms that in today’s Russia, the line separating big business and the state is becoming so fine that it’s almost nonexistent.

Gazprom and the government have long had a close relationship, but the revolving door between them is spinning especially fast this year: Mr. Medvedev, 42, replaces Mr. Putin as president; Mr. Putin becomes prime minister, replacing Viktor A. Zubkov; and Mr. Zubkov is expected to take Mr. Medvedev’s place as Gazprom’s chairman at a general shareholders meeting in June.

Mr. Medvedev and Mr. Putin “are as close to a dream team as Gazprom could ever hope for,” said Jonathan P. Stern, a British energy analyst and author of “The Future of Russian Gas and Gazprom.”



More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/business/worldbusiness/11gaz.html?_r=1&ref=world&oref=slogin

Not all that different from what we've seen in the states....

[tom_paine]

1. Yes, Imperial Amerika and Putin's Russia are Sister Nations ruled by the same form of government

No doubt nor question now. No matter what they call themselevs, or what we call ourselves, it is a lie. Both nations are not free, both nations are ruled by this new "kinder and gentler" form of totalitarianism pioneered by the Bush and Putin Families.

And both nations seek to lie and camoflauge this latest evolution of "good government" (as BushPutinists and Nazis see it) in the corpse skin of the nation left behind, in the bcase ofthe Bushies and Amerika, BushPutinist Russia has no need of such elaborate schemes to deceive their more obviously enslaved people, but even they are trying the Bush Way.