a stumbling block as the drug supply line is cut by the e.u. . now just after three pm on a thursday here in moscow you're watching the life with me research a russia needs democracy not chaos that's the words of president dmitri medvedev effin is annual address to parliament he said he's heard the voices calling for change and presented a concrete plan for reform of the political system inside russia. and now has more from the kremlin. people's voices will become louder than each and they promised thanks to sweeping reforms of the country's political system and political establishment was actually listening very carefully to the president's own goal we reform plans and mitchell the better deeds catch all the first steps though the

president leadership my proposals are to introduce direct elections for russia's regional heads to simplify the registration of political parties to remove the need to gather signatures to take part in federal and regional parliamentary elections to cut the number of signatures needed to take part in the presidential election i also suggest changing the system for the parliamentary election i suggest introducing proportional representation in two hundred twenty five constituencies this will allow each territory to have the director representative in the parliament north. pole this address of the nation that that is his fourth and final as the president was unconventional in a way because he had to address the most recent developments in the country following the december or parliamentary elections in particular he responded to the protests of opposition and claims that the election had been rigged and its results should be canceled this is what mentioned it that it said whatever. people's right

to express their opinion by all means is guaranteed attempts to manipulate the people of russia deceive them to instigate social discord are acceptable but we won't allow extremists so provocator is to draw society into the shady enterprises we won't allow interference from outside in our internal affairs russia needs democracy not chaos. goals here he even quoted eisenhower the motto of real democracy is not let the government do it for us but let us do it ourselves. right there let's get more details on with the dress with a political analyst. joining me here in the studio good to see you. announced these reforms that he says will make it easier for more people to have their political voices heard will these reforms i do such a task oh there are

a stream points in that there isn't speech and they all need qualifications so i think you should wait until maybe the end of that the to find out what exactly he meant it was basically he said that we shall have. for the governess we will see what he meant because prime minister putin just a day before said that there will be elections but this is will be suggested by political party yes which was in the local elections and approved by the president so we'll see if. exactly what we can say now as as you did say there and i do have the direct translation of what you mentioned here and among other things that you just mentioned. suggesting the need to remove the need to gather signatures to take part in federal regional parliamentary elections to cut the number of signatures needed to take part in the presidential election and also suggesting introducing a proportional representation in two hundred twenty five constituencies understand

we already have a form of proportional representation in the government now but these steps if i may just ask you these steps that they come on the backdrop of public discontent as you know we've had several weeks of protests here in central moscow do you think these announced reforms are a reaction to the protests or were they already in the planning i think they were in the planing and they wouldn't say that there were several weeks of protests you know just a day or four thousand people gathered in the center of moscow and demanded more of course i wouldn't call it several weeks of protests that you see forty thousand people gathered because there has been a lot of confusion we've had some western networks saying fifty to one hundred thousand all men on the ground our correspondent set up. twenty thousand now you're saying forty thousand is still a bit of confusion about all the members of that in the media and c.t.o. way more score even fifty thousand is not very impressive because it's. around two or three percent of the people who actually even see it so basically we would see

what he meant because with these single men they knew that it's not quite clear because the new speaker of the door and said that they indeed will represent these two hundred twenty five constituencies but again the cadence will be nominated by the party yes that's right the candidates nominated by the party certainly again there is that field. of prime minister called it you know a lot of bodies in the establishment to feel there are a lot of people who they may concede a dangerous understand and so let's talk about this as mediators last address as the country's president what kind of legacy is he leaving behind but i think he leaves a pretty good legacy because even if we have concrete facts you know russia joint will win anything. there will be a lot of problems but it's a step in the right this minute it's been a long time coming. he leaves a different society than the one that he took when he became president now we have

people who always do require more freedom i think that these measures that he mentioned during his speech you know. for us they are. not very logical as they are they still reflect this desire for greater freedom. greater freedom from well to do part of the population and i think that's a very good development sort of his balance in general will be a positive but it's a positive legacy as you say but briefly if we can just briefly touch down on this one of the continued bones of contention between a mosque in washington d.c. the european missile defense program here some people are saying that maybe it maybe it has been perhaps a bit too diplomatic with the obama administration with this and perhaps the next generation of leaders in russia people need a stronger leader with medvedev hoping to become prime minister after he steps down for the presidency do you think he'll have any authority to play on well i think he

will not drive russian foreign policy as prime minister we will see what kind of prime minister he will be that will be a tough job because he never actually ran you know so it will be for him but as for foreign policy as for united states i think the russian border issue was to stay the same because because we can what you might have a choice russia wants to be friends with the united states russia wants to be friends with you or up russia it is not to be replaced and to be basically intimidated by american so by europeans so russian foreign policy will all this between friendship and you know the readiness to do found its own interest there are certain limits beyond which not even going to be difficult political analyst always a pleasure thank you very much. a lot is coming to you live from the heart of moscow another key focus of yet if i dress was of course on economic reform let's turn to

current account now from the the auto business desk and see what you can give us. for we in business will be looking at maybe it is economic achievements and what goals are set for the next president so join me in ten minutes or. before a look on that we'll talk to your analyst about what's what's in store for next year. we think arena in about thirteen minutes now as it's ten past the hour here in moscow league observers are due to arrive in syria on thursday that's part of a plan to halt violence in the country it's after one of the bloodiest weeks since the beginning of the unrest nine months ago activists say more than two hundred have been killed in just the last few days the u.s. has meantime renewed its call for president assad to step down warning of new interim measures lessen withdrawals of security forces from the streets of syria is already suffering under a set of sanctions. for what's it's the ordinary people who are feeling the pain.

it's been nearly ten months since syria's uprising began the capital of damascus is a main laws he sells it from the conflict to fight it in the bustling sun so it seems like it's business as usual this one says it's in the winds of change have begun subliminal stronger the arab league's imposed tough economic sanctions the effects of which have been felt even hid in a poor area in the suburbs of damascus grass and her family struggling to make ends meet as so new has learning difficulties fava beans for a living he barely makes one hundred fifty syrian pounds a day three dollars to support him and physically. no the fuel for his vending cart has become harder to get hold of with the economic sanctions. their last products available and the prices are pushed higher there's been fights over gas we've been trying to manage by cutting back as much as we can but sometimes when we can't afford it which is don't eat. economic situation in syria

was one of the areas president assad had been seen to be making for progress be it . the for a population that it started seeing the results of economic opportunity a block financial transactions. and had blackouts become the norm. because of the economic sanctions people rushed to stockpile fuel and das just taste people are a little bit afraid of the fact that water or gas might run out and this is why you see these queues this in place by the arab league it was fake the sanctions were full the government hands when it came to ending the violence in the country because inside syria at the moment many feel is every day people being punished. and is that they could be even darker financial times ahead share prices in our stock market sicker things to change. down

affected by some lows for example of the increase of the capital of. private banks in syria the increase of interest rate of the banks and affected in directly on the decision of the investors. from the arab league will be paving the way for an observer mission to at the end of the month. position they remain skeptical about whether that too will bring about any change these coups up in the west of the conflict areas change can come in they meant tesing some parents of t.c. families like. finding life under the sanctions increasingly desperate search. damascus. we return to the place where the unrest that shook the arab world all began as we look back at the landmark events of two thousand and eleven through the

eyes of our correspondents who witnessed and covered them. from the dangers of being a female journalist reporting from the frontline to the frustrated hopes of holding our second part of our special series coming your way in just a few. history. it's good to have you with us on this thursday the european union's imposed tough new restrictions on the sale of drugs used to execute people in the united states the move that's likely to worsen an already short supply across the atlantic is aimed at fighting capital punishment and some of its controversial methods there are fears that intrepid states may find

a way around the controls. reports. they've tried hanging electrocution and most recently a drug used to euthanize animals but now american jails will find it much harder to kill prisoners on death row the main supply line for its lethal injections has been cut off after the e.u. slept new restrictions on drug exports i really think this will make a difference and we will see the effects of this this control order in the coming months that the the u.s. relies on european drugs for use in executions and without them they're going to be stuck and lives will be saved specific execution drugs aren't made in the e.u. but several american states have been importing sedatives instead drugs designed to help being used to hurt. exports of drugs like sodium thiopental will now be controlled to stop their use in a three part lethal cocktail the in

a static was being used to put the condemned inmate to sleep as another drug paralyzed before the final heart stopper was administered without that initial numbing stage lethal injections are unconstitutional under u.s. law the usual supply for these drugs has been dwindling since the only u.s. manufacturer ceased production last year american prisons though found an alternative source right here in west london but it's fairly unassuming driving school buildings also shared by dream farmer a british firm exporting british drugs the u.s. prisons to kill people the u.k. government soon found out and banned its use so american prisons searched elsewhere r.t. reported in may how some states have begun using pen to barbara told a drug normally used to put pets to sleep that's never been tested for human executions its primary use for humans is to treat epilepsy but it has no pain

killing properties many feel its use on death throes tantamount to torture this can cause excruciating pain if something goes wrong and because we have no tests we cannot guarantee that nothing will go around so people at risk of not just being killed being tortured to death following a report danish manufacturer imposed their own restrictions to prevent penta bottles misuse the new e.u. embargo covers eight barbiturates in total including painted by us stockpiles will eventually run dry but many fear it's only a matter of time before prisons try again with something else unfortunately the death merchants in the us can sometimes be creative in terms of what they put to use in order to put people to death and so i think what we need is a clause which said if other drugs should appear on the market and we discover the u.s. is misuse. those we can quickly have a quick procedure to add those to the list without you know wait another year aside

from lethal injection other methods like hanging and firing squads are still sanctioned in the us but in now rarely used these new restrictions may not choke off the drug supply completely but it will certainly tighten the noose on america's controversial death penalty. either bennett artsy london in a minute's time here on r.t. it's korean or with the business but for now it's time for our special series a firsthand report on the events that marked two thousand and eleven the egyptian revolution did not just change the course of the country's history but spearheaded the arab spring and the wave of protests that swept all across the middle east policy i was reporting from and shares what never actually made it into her life news reports. i think my biggest impression from covering the egyptian story this year is the

sense of betrayal and anger that people in egypt still have when i was there back in january when the revolution started talking to protest as they the general consensus and really this is what people were saying to me was that they felt that they were part of the street they were creating a new country and a new future for egypt. and going back again in november when the second resolution happened all the second part of the first revolution depending who you talk to those same potest has told me that they felt that the trust that they had placed in the army had been misplaced there are hundreds of it wasn't people who lost or not right now in times square as you can see many of them heeding quite. occupation it was dangerous covering the egypt story as a journalist and i think it was even more dangerous to cousin that as a foreign journalist i remember when we have a better time so if you read we kept a very low profile we tried not to go too much into the crowd in tahrir square we

took all kinds of signage that we had on us that said we were journalists i mean of course you can't hide the camera so by and large you don't want to do that more attention to me than is necessary the offices from which we were forecasting we took a few of the signs that said that we were media because this was also was inciting anger and frustration among the people. people often ask me if being a woman is an advantage or disadvantage to going to dangerous areas as a journalist most of the time that is an advantage because we find that people have to shake things mode with you on twitter you can hear men and women because you're a woman and you laced with me perhaps in a male colleague but i did feel frightened being a woman in tough experience people. they may leave and they can't be replaced with one thing takes months remembering what went on i can tell me that anything i'd look for tucker square when i walk through female colleague whether it was an egyptian camera man away russian cameramen and i always felt much safer putting my

arm through his but people would still walk past me brush up squeeze a part of my body and look at me with this kind of leering that leaves you feel very frightened and very vulnerable as a woman. back in february when the police were taken off the streets there was a real sense of complete mona snows in cairo and i remember doing a lot of reports of my talks it was. very i mean i'm not now i'm not a. married yes i am certainly at night i had to move back to the hotel because there was a curfew and there were no cars on the street and it was almost sunil walking past apartment buildings and seen people coming in front of the apartment buildings that had formed a kind of nightwatch group and you had people in their eighty's and their ninety's standing there with literally a kitchen knife or a kitchen broom and with that they were going to protect their apartments farm these gangs that were patrolling the streets of cairo they were trying to steal

what they could because as i say there were no police around this is your friend as if. there was one going to go to a particular area was very frightened and we were standing on the outskirts of tusker square i was talking to a group of people and as always have to just speak to one person and then everybody comes to see what's happening and and people who have been in the waiting room so it's not that they are listening to what's being said often they just want to get a voice is expressed in the telegraph and in the moment and that's and that's the scary part is that these things happen in a moment in a moment the entire change and people started yelling and shouting not that they just wanted their voices to be heard but that they actually wanted to protest as journalists and the egypt to come in and i was working with understood in egypt. what was happening he started screaming for me to get into the car i remember the driver because we had to drive the that had been allocated to us came screeching down the road i mean looking pushed beyond the crowd and the journalist did the camera and was pushing me into the comedy getting into the car he kind of flung

himself in off to me in the car was banging on the car as we sped away i was very very frightened and it was moments like that when you realize that the mood in a place like tucker square from one second to another can change dramatically. and i don't even know if the world revolution is the one i would but i don't think the revolution in egypt is over we've witnessed two say uses of perhaps the same revolution or two revolutions but again the anger the frustration the disappointment the sense of hopes of not being realized is poll people on the streets of cairo every week when there is a sense that this country is nowhere near where people had hoped and dreamed it would be back in february and i think this is the general uncertainty that is sweeping the middle east there is a sense that things are changing but another sense of no one not knowing exactly where and how and what ultimately these changes will bring.

and we have more on our theories are two thousand and eleven a retrospective all the way through december thirty first here when our rest of. the business. thank you rory hello and welcome to our business update this hour economic achievements are high on president medvedev agenda that was the key focus in his address to russia's federal assembly today where this turn as president coming to an end he pointed out that the russian economy has managed to grow faster than its peers despite the global slowdown. but out there in the russia has successfully overcome the most difficult period of global economic instability and has returned to pre-crisis growth levels our economy is growing by around four percent which is faster than most developed countries we keep government debt at a very low level and meet all our liabilities russia has become the world's sixth

largest economy. now the rest of president medvedev speech centered around top priorities in the country's economic policy for the coming years these included economic integration boosting competition and increasing the role of small business now discuss these challenges are now joined by jacob knell chief economist morgan stanley rochelle thank you again very kindly nice to see you ok so political liberalization was the key message that made it through it made a good speech but what effects will it have on business on the business climate in general you know i think an investment climate here i think it's it's a sort of secondary importance actually for business what business really wants what's good for the investment climate is to build see predictability triviality to secure decent returns at relatively low risk and political liberalization can be important if that means that political risks are somehow integrated into the

political process and there isn't a significant risk of some kind of regime challenge like you saw in the arab world earlier this year but i think that the risks of such a challenge in russia although perhaps they've increased in some people's minds in the last few weeks quite small because russia has full employment it's actually got accelerating growth in the second half of this year. and it also has a. declining population of young men because of the collapse in the birth rate in the early one nine hundred ninety s. so russia actually faces a labor shortage unlike the labor surplus you have in the arab countries which mean that lots of young men without without a decent job so i think that the subjective reasons why it's much less likely that there will be some kind of russian spring but political liberalization is probably helpful although of secondary importance in so far as it means that protests and issues get dealt with within the political process rather than by some kind of

confrontation and they will to me the most important. the most important subject that that he stressed was corruption fighting corruption i heard that from prime minister putin several days ago where he said that there should be no attacks off you know taxes should be paid in this country business should not put their money offshore where is the link between those two i mean right now it's very interesting i mean i think if you think about earlier this year you had this apparent dispute or disagreement between putin and medvedev where medvedev was advocating a policy of progress of modernization one person was saying well fine but we also need stability and so people saw a difference between their positions now i think in the united russia congress in september where putin's candidacy for president was announced he threw himself behind some of the key top line messages in the modernization agenda raising investment of twenty five percent of g.d.p. and increasing the growth rate to six or seven percent a year which requires serious structural reform. but so what i think we're seeing

now as part of the reaction of the leadership to the fall in united russia vote and then says we understand the street protests here and perhaps to the slogan party of thieves and swindlers that the opposition often years is an acceleration of the reform program the modernization program i think and putin's actually led the way i mean he actually indicated in his telephone thought on friday that he was. the election of governors that he would allow votes. level but most importantly on monday i think he was unprecedentedly open about the scale of corruption in one key sector the power sector and in commissioning a port on related party transactions on the use of offshore structures and the state officials that are a nice company all state owned companies by mid february i think that we have

a very high likelihood that some serious action will be taken before the elections because a good thing. something will be something will happen and i think it was quite significant and i think that medvedev so they don't since today putin's talk about new industrialization and associated tax economic reforms yesterday are all part of a step by step development of a new reforming presidential program which i think we'll see in its full glory in towards the end of january but what do you think could be the long term and short term effects of all these proposed ideas so short term it's probably not going to be that positive we may see an acceleration of capital outflows an increase in uncertainty at a company level because management of being changed and among investors because they're not sure what we're going to are who's going to be the government what the direction of policy is going to be but i think in the medium to. leadership is tackling the key issues that face the country and the things that need to be tackled to improve the investment climate and raise the growth rate so medium term

is very positive but you also mentioned about you also talk about economic integration meaning bill that was kazakhstan and also meeting w t o yeah you know how important that i mean it also i think is very very important for what i write russia becoming integrated in the global economy in a range of sectors not just as a provider reform materials is extremely important for developing a diversified economy and that's what russia needs ok ok thank you very much like you know thanks for coming to the program well that's all we have time for blood join us in less than one hour for more here on business r.t. . british stock.

market. really happening to the global economy mike stronger. the global financial headlines. are you watching all the time if you had russia's president has called for political reform. union speech. and suggested a direct elections for regional. arrive in syria as part of a deal. by the organization. for the people being the ones to feel the pinch.