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Putin critisises security ministers

After the socioeconomic block of the government Russian President Vladimir Putin also criticised its security ministers. The five-year plans of work presented by them were the reason for this: the president admitted that they “disappointed him” and instructed the ministers to “get rid of formalism.” Putin demanded from the Ministry of Defence to solve before the end of the year the problem with the military that are in queue for housing from January 1, 2012.

When opening the meeting, Putin reminded the participants, including Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu, Minister of Emergency Situations Vladimir Puchkov and Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev of their personal political responsibility for the work results, the Kommersant Daily writes. “I have recently reviewed the plans that were presented by civilian agencies - there are many problems there,” the president said. “But what I’ve seen in your plans, to be honest, has disappointed me.” “The tasks must be formulated in concrete terms and the simpler, the better,” Putin stated.

The president also advised the ministers to stop preparing “large tomes from which is not quite clear what results our work will bring by the end of the year.”

Putin demanded from the Defence Ministry to provide by the end of this year with permanent housing all the houseless officers, who were standing in line since January 1st, 2012. The newspaper reported that the Defence Ministry is currently developing a bill according to which the main form of compensation to servicemen will be one-time monetary payment. In fact, instead of the provision of housing to military servicemen it will be proposed to give them money for the purchase of housing. Putin demanded that the Ministry of Defence provide all the military personnel that are in queue for permanent housing since January 1st, 2012, with housing by the end of December.

Other agencies also received instructions at the meeting. Thus, the Interior Ministry was given the task to “toughly suppress the activities of organised criminal groups formed based on the ethnic principle,” and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “to promote partnership with the CIS countries” and work “on the creation of the Eurasian Economic Union by 2015.”

The Kommersant Daily recalls that on 7 June, the RF president criticised the socio-economic block of the government. He stated that “the quality and content of the documents so far fail to meet the set requirements,” and the developed five-year plans contain “too many general statements and vague phrases.” The president gave the ministers three to four weeks to finalise the documents.

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