Putin Offers Olive Branch to Business With Billionaire Freed

Russian President Vladimir Putin has made a conciliatory move toward business, publicly inviting AFK Sistema Chairman Vladimir Evtushenkov to a meeting tomorrow after the billionaire was freed from house arrest.

Putin is sending a message that the state won’t target business owners as the economy threatens to collapse, according to Alexander Shokhin, head of the Russian Union of Industrialists & Entrepreneurs lobby.