Sergey Aleksashenko: "Crackling Bolivar"

“And what does the president instruct you to do?
Do you think he instructs the Minister of Finance to redistribute budget system revenues in favor of the regions? Or “open” the sacred oil and gas stash and send it to the increase in teachers’ salaries that he himself promised? Or does he make a heroic decision to cut military and police spending that is thoughtless in magnitude and useless for the economy, and send the saved money to finance education? No matter how it is!

The government has been instructed, firstly, to think about whether to issue guarantees to the regions for their loans and whether to replace bank loans with loans from the Ministry of Finance?
Both will hit the income of Sberbank and VTB, which have become the main lenders for the regions, but let them endure - we must share!”