10 Years of Putin

After Boris Yeltsin named him as his prime minister in August 1999, Putin (pictured above on August 16, 1999, after the State Duma confirmed premiership) had to endear himself to voters, who had no idea who he was or what he stood for, to gain their votes in the May 2000 elections. In February 2000, he stated that he would not make his campaign platform public because he believed that "as soon as you make it public, they will start gnawing at it and tearing it to pieces." The only thing resembling an explanation of his beliefs was in an open letter to the voters saying, "our first and most important problem is the weakening of will. … Vacillation, dithering, the habit of putting off the hardest tasks for later."
Search and rescue helicopters and volunteers struggling through thick forest and mountainous terrain spotted bodies but no survivors on the Indonesian mountainside where a Sukhoi Superjet 100 crashed by the time darkness forced an end to the search Thursday night.
A dark cloud was cast Wednesday on the revival of Russia’s aviation industry when a Sukhoi-built Superjet 100 with 50 people on board disappeared from the radar screens of Indonesian flight controllers.



