Putin Praises Billionaire for Voluntary Contribution to Budget

Russian President Vladimir Putin welcomed an initiative from one of the country’s billionaires to donate a large sum to the budget as a contribution reflecting how businesses were built in the 1990s, the Kremlin said.

One of the participants in a closed-door meeting between Putin and Russian business leaders on Thursday offered to give a large sum to the state, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Friday, according to the Interfax news service. The tycoon “argued that the vast majority of those at the meeting started their businesses in the 1990s, and that, in most cases, those beginnings were in one way or another connected to the state,” Peskov said.