Today, in the third reading, the State Duma adopted a law on the abolition of deferments - everything that was possible was canceled. Rural doctors, teachers, those caring for elderly parents, fathers of young children, and the husband of a pregnant wife will be called upon. They left a deferment, thank God, for the father of a disabled child, and if you already have a child and a pregnant wife, they won’t take it away either.

Mikhail Fradkov started a large-scale restructuring in the government. The plan has already been laid out to the president, who has approved it. As usual, revolutionary plans are kept secret for now - all that is known is that the positions of the Ministry of Economic Development and Trade and the Ministry of Finance will follow.

It’s not for nothing that Putin hinted at the economic forum that we are fighting corruption. True, contrary to expectations, it was not officials who began to imprison, but businessmen, who, obviously, earn their “black millions” with the help of the authorities.

What cannot be taken away from the Russian president is the ability to put his interlocutor in his place. I think they didn’t teach this in the Gebukh, it’s innate. The Russian president withstood the Georgian president until late in the evening (however, if anyone dares to reproach, you can laugh it off about the St. Petersburg white nights). And how he faked the representatives of Western companies with whom he met at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

Kudrin is behaving somehow carelessly, somehow strangely... But the Public Chamber is not a decree for him - the law “on the ban on the dollar” refuses to accept and approve, they say, it is inconvenient for him to convert GDP into rubles. And today he’s completely obsessed with the Russian economy: he doesn’t like petrodollars, inflation will rise, capital will leave the country, and economic growth will decline. It destroys, you know, the rosy picture of Russian prosperity.

The decision to hold a referendum on recognition of Israel provoked a surge in inter-Palestinian clashes. Supporters of the Fatah movement, led by Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, seized parliament. Civil servants, who had not received their salaries for several months, burst into parliament, shouting slogans against Hamas, and began attacking parliamentarians from this movement, trying to beat them. Several visitors climbed onto the desks of the deputies and began chanting: “We are hungry!”

The main event in Russian-Belarusian relations is the Gazprom ultimatum. They say that if Belarus really pays 3-4 times more for gas, then the Belarusian economy is screwed. So, apparently, we will have to part with Beltransgaz. In the meantime, there is time for minor dirty tricks: the day before, temporary posts of Belarusian customs officers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs were installed on the Russian-Belarusian border.

Our patriots are rejoicing at the expulsion of the Americans from Crimea, and I think that even this is in favor of Yushchenko. Don't forget where we live. We live in the Soviet Union, no matter how many parts it is divided into and no matter what they are called. And Ukraine is the USSR.

The Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church considers the decision of the Synod of the Patriarchate of Constantinople canonically incompetent, as taken in violation of the rules of the Holy Apostles, and is going to make a judgment on the merits of the case after studying all the circumstances.

Being an attentive reader of modern Russian literature - from elite novelties like the "Drawing Textbook" to the large-circulation editions of Pelevin and Akunin - and not knowing, to my shame, the great writer who was awarded the State Prize from the hands of the president, I immediately tried to eliminate my ignorance. Ignorance was immediately eliminated. The prolific Tatar poet Renat Kharisov has several dozen books.

The Georgian authorities are seriously afraid of mass unrest in the country. The fact is that Georgian public television shows feature films during football broadcasts, and in some regions of Georgia people cannot watch the 2006 World Cup matches. The population is already grumbling. The Georgian parliament took up the problem directly: Vice-Speaker Mikhail Machavariani said that showing films instead of football is “one of the ways to piss people off.”