Numerous Russian periodicals are focused on Ukraine’s new Cabinet. President Victor Yanukovich expressly arrived in parliament to submit Nikolai Azarov’s candidacy for Prime Minister. The Komsomolskaya Pravda daily writes in an article that Ukaine’s new Prime Minister was born in the Russian city of Kaluga and graduated from Moscow State University, and it was not before the 1980s that he moved to Ukraine. Azarov is a longstanding associate of Yanukovich’s, he coordinated the work of the president’s election centre, and was deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister prior to Tymoshenko. The new PM focused at once on the problems he inherited from the previous “orange” government. He said in an address to the MPs that the country was plundered, the treasury was empty, while the state debt had grown threefold. Ukraine has no budget drawn up for 2010. Azarov feels therefore that the new Cabinet should get down to work at once.
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has found a way to relieve the courts. According to the Vedomosti periodical, he has submitted to the State Duma a draft law on an alternative procedure to settle disputes through mediation. The draft provides for mediatory efforts to settle disputes without involving the judiciary. Mediators could be used to settle civil conflicts, whether economic, labour or family ones.
The Vremya Novostei newspaper reports that Russia has started developing a new-generation destroyer for the Russian Navy. A new warship will be multipurpose, boasting a set of vertical launch missiles. According to military expert estimates, it is the combat ships of this class that will prove much in demand in the next 35 years.
The Kommersant daily reports that Russians may find it more difficult to obtain a Schengen entry visa. The applicants will now have to fill in a changed form that authorizes a handover of the applicants’ confidential information to the consular service of another Schengen zone country. Meanwhile the European Union has reiterated that it looks to establishing a visa-free travel regime with Russia shortly.
The prominent football coach Guus Hiddink may after all get to this year’s world football championships in South Africa. The Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily feels that his rush to leave Russia, whose national team failed to make it to the championships under his tutorship, is quite explicable. According to news reports, Hiddink has signed a two-month contract with the team of Cote d’Ivoire, to accompany it to South Africa.
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