On the Russian people and individual democrats By Grigory Pasko, journalist Last year, I visited Samara and told readers of the blog about the surroundings in which the Germany-Russia summit was taking place. One of the articles was fully devoted to Samara’s roads – probably the worst in all of Russia. In my article, in particular, I cited such numbers: according to official data, 3 billion rubles were directed from the federal budget to the Samara budget on the eve of the summit in a targeted allocated for the repair of roads. 800 million rubles for repairing roads was allocated from the oblast budget. The city itself promised another 40 million rubles from its own funds. All in all – 3 billion 840 million rubles. That’s $154 million dollars. Towards the beginning of the work of the summit, a PIECE OF ONE road leading from the airport to the city had been built – no more than five kilometers. A month after the summit, I telephoned an acquaintance of mine and expressed interest in the state of the roads and the process of their repair. He responded: if in the days of the work of the summit at least the cracks in the pavement were being filled with tar, nowadays no works whatsoever are being conducted. The eternal Russian question: where did the budget money disappear to? The eternal Russian answer: it was pilfered! [Photo: Vladimir Putin and Grigory Yavlinsky, RIA Novosti]