Ex-finance minister says Russian economy in "full-blown crisis":
Former Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin says the Russian economy is in a "full-blown crisis" fueled by capital flight and low economic growth due to the conflict in eastern Ukraine and low global oil prices.
Kudrin said in an address on June 3 to the Federation Council upper house of parliament in Moscow on June 3 that capital flight from Russia last year was $150 billion and will be some $100 billion-$110 billion in 2015.
He said the private sector was mainly responsible for the capital flight and that people were taking their money out of Russia because "something doesn't work here."
Kudrin, finance minister from 2000-2011, said the current economic model in Russia "needs to change."
He said the current economic problems in the country were due to the "absence of structural reforms" in recent years and an overreliance on energy exports.
Kudrin said the Ukraine crisis and the resulting international economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its involvement in the conflict were reducing Russia's GDP by between 1 and 1.5 percent per year.
He added that about 500,000 people will lose their jobs because of the bad economic conditions in Russia.
Russia has vehemently denied playing a direct role in the conflict, despite a plethora of evidence proving it has supplied manpower and military materiel to the rebels.
The country has also provided guidance, which is apparently what Vladislav Surkov, a top Kremlin ideologist and foreign policy advisor who has the ear of President Vladimir Putin, was giving to separatist leaders this week in Donetsk.
The Kremlin has not released information regarding his visit, but in Moscow, Igor "Strelkov" Girkin, the enigmatic former rebel commander and self-professed ex-colonel in Russia's FSB security service, confirmed to Mashable that Surkov had visited Donetsk this week, but was tightlipped about his goings-on there.
In a post attributed to Strelkov on Tuesday, he said Surkov "yelled and swore a lot" at Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko "about the fact that Zakharchenko refuses to 'merge' Donetsk with the same readiness and speed with which [Igor] Plotnitsky is doing it in Luhansk."
Strelkov would like to see the two regions join together under one flag as "Novorossiya," or New Russia, a Czarist-era term used for a large area of southeastern Ukraine. The term was used several times last year by Putin to describe the region. But that hope appears to have been dashed after it was announced last week that the project had closed.
When asked whether Novorossiya had died, Strelkov told Mashable, "Never. It lives."
When told about the fight underway around Marinka, he responded with a resounding "good."