No more Russian roulette

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wants to close the country's casinos. The liberal conservative daily Corriere della Sera compares the step with Mikhail Gorbachev's attempt to ban vodka in 1985 when he was General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union: "An attempt that failed miserably. Almost half of the deaths among the male population today are alcohol-related. … [With the closure of the casinos] thousands of employees are in danger of losing their jobs from one day to the next, and the decision could also have considerable economic repercussions since the sector claims it pays almost a billion dollars in tax each year. But the 'new Russia' of which Putin dreams could no longer bear the shadow cast by these structures which shot up like mushrooms in the course of the privatisation of the 1990s. … And then there's the fact that a large section of the business is in the hands of the detested Georgians."

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» To the complete press review of Tuesday, June 30, 2009