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Putin had to ‘snap’ at top economic officials to launch some major projects

The president revealed he had had to "snap" at former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin a couple of times, because the latter had opposed certain projects due to their high cost

MOSCOW, February 25. /TASS/. It was quite a challenge to discuss a number of big infrastructure projects with Russia’s former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and former Economy Minister Herman Gref, Russian President Vladimir Putin told TASS in an interview for the project entitled "20 Questions with Vladimir Putin." He added that he had had to "snap" at Kudrin a couple of times, because the latter had opposed such projects due to their high cost.

"He [Kudrin] was against every issue," Putin recalled. "For instance, he strongly opposed building the ring road around St. Petersburg." "He and Gref, the Minister of Economics and the Minister of Finance, visited me twice," the president noted. "They agreed to allocate funds to build the ring road around St. Petersburg only when I snapped at them," he added.

The president said that he had had to resort to the same tactic to press for other big infrastructure projects. According to him, Kudrin and Gref "were against building a bridge to Russky Island" and "certain infrastructure facilities in Sochi." "‘We do not need them. Too expensive,’ they stated," he explained. "In all cases, they kept saying that there were other more important objectives, that the macroeconomic situation must be taken care of, that the budget must not be thrown off balance," Putin added. However, he noted with pleasure that those facilities had eventually been built and were operating successfully.

According to the head of state, with time, Kudrin changed his viewpoint on big budget spending. "Now, he believes that we have enough resources, that we can ease macroeconomic and fiscal policy a bit and revise the cutoff price applied to oil and gas revenues, while allocating more oil and gas income, roughly speaking, to consumption," the Russian leader noted.

However, Kudrin’s viewpoint changed after he had taken office as Chairman of the Russian Accounts Chamber in 2018, Putin added with irony that "the viewpoint has certainly changed", and apparently "the viewer" could see better because he "is no longer afraid of being socked in the eye," he said. "As there is no direct responsibility. And the people he worked with - all of them - his disciples to an extent - they feel somewhat perplexed," the head of state concluded.

Episode 3 of the video interview is available at https://putin.tass.ru/en.