this is like the book for real people. interested always at the water's edge. thanks to. the big news today that they were posted in his annual presidential address to russian lawmakers suggest shifting the power to appoint the prime minister and hold government to the lower house of russia's parliament is big news we'll tell you more. such as the suggestion that you should join this isn't it the minister does not have to be appointed by the president without the right to reject any candidates also in the headlines this one is tough to washington's assassination of iran's top general america's top diplomat says it's all part of a new did terror and strategy with warnings for russia and china. a new declassified papers reveal the reuters news agency received generous funds from

british intelligence during the cold war to help spread the soviet propaganda. to do life the r.t. world news center this wednesday 15th of january it's kevin over here just coming on to you too great to have your company then i hope you'll stick around for at least the next half hour as we take you through the main stories of the day as you'll know if you're watching in the last hour the big news of the day was that putin speaking to the federation council it's kind of the state of the nation annual speech he's proposed a major legislation shift in that that would see russia's pm cabinet ministers no longer appointed by the president but by the state duma that suggestion came while president putin delivering his annual state of the nation address to lawmakers.

across all this watching him talking to various greater good down there today there is again hey one of the priorities outlined by the russian president including what we said there about the way might be made up in the. decide in the future. kevin good afternoon well 1st of all i can tell you that we were expecting to hear where russia is supposed to head in the year or 2020 but it looks like today's speech expanded to further in the russian future because quite surprisingly mr putin ended his speech by talking in speaking volumes about the proposed changes to the russian constitution that he was mentioning several aspects but perhaps the most important one is about appointing the washing government pretty much the prime minister and other cabinet ministers previously it was his job it's now the proposal is to change that all together and have

a listen he's. so through it's just that you according to the constitution of the russian federation he's the president needs only the state duma's consent to make official appointment with the president appoints the cabinet his deputies and was the minister this is i propose shifting this power to the state duma and also the approval of the russian government chairman if he who used and at the chairman suggestion or the deputy prime ministers and federal minister this will have to be appointed by the president without the right to reject and you candidates that it preaches that he's getting further changes to the russian main legislation the russian constitution may include putting that document above some elements of the international law which is very important although i did hear from some of my guests here that this isn't something that russia's western partners should worry about which we do expect some more explanation as to whether what exactly these

things where they could lead their way to plus there are tougher restrictions on the future tell you then she can do that in russia and that we should expect for example making sure that before. a candidate takes part in the election should he or she should have lived in russia for at least 25 years plus there was a ban on having any foreign citizenship or even residence permit so these are the things that are very important but we do have to understand that piece all these changes take place and before they are actually written let's say. before we see the ng can the russian constitution these changes have to be approved by the entire nation and what mr putin's proposed was a vote so perhaps we are to expect some kind of vote for the entire russian population now we do have to remember that back in 2018 also 2019 mr

putin brought russia's next generation weapons capabilities he spoke a lot of valid to the development of for instance hypersonic missiles and that was russia's response to the international situation as it is right now for example the most important thing is the withdrawal of the west from the intermediate range nuclear forces treaty for instance and some of the other decisions that we are seeing being taken by the donald trump administration in washington well we didn't hear much about that today but it was very important that mr putin said that all the plans that russia had for these aspects have been fulfilled and here's what else mr putin said about the responsibility of russia and its global partners and what it comes to global strategic stability and also of the weapons disarmament but i see you used to just get to speak to him in that bit you

know we didn't have 5 major nuclear powers are responsible for the preservation and development of mankind russia is open to strengthening cooperation with all interested partners we do not threat. and anyone and do not seek to impose our will for the 1st time in the history of the existence of nuclear missile weapons we are not pursuing anyone but on the contrary all the states have to create weapons that russia already possesses. of course it is always crucial to hear what mr putin ends with but it's no less important to go focus on what was said at the very beginning of the speech and mr putin focused on social issues domestic economic issues all watch what is really now the priority of the russian government what mr putin thinks that should be it is supporting families so he was mentioning certain number of sums that are

supposed to given annually and monthly to the poor layers of the russian society he was talking about supporting families that gives birth to 2 or more children and there are actually sums like mr putin said that are enough to go to help families. cover their spendings in some russia's regions of for buying property that's enough to accommodate entire families so again this speaks volumes about the priorities that the president has said for the country at this point so please take a listen to what the russian president said exactly when it comes to that just if you speak to us as a result of our future depends on how many people live in our country how many kids are born into russian families in one year in 5 years in 10 years demographic issues don't have universal solutions every step we make every law we adopt every

state program must be evaluated from the point of a higher national priority to keep it multiply the russian population. while the. springs me to the. hopefully i do have to say that we have someone very important possibly be coming here to talk to me and hopefully kevin i'll get back to talking to you in about a couple of minutes but for now back to you or i really wish you'd spill the beans they are not going to tell us you put us on a high suspense now though i know who that is so when come back she was a particular in central moscow they're ok we're fine i was talking to you soon or out loud got someone told so much of a call a hey there martin i'm not a chance to say cheaper prices for and hopefully can hear me martha macauley is on the line martin potence proposed changes to the constitution that will essentially

lessen his own powers are you surprised to have heard that what we make of. that surprised me because everyone expects him to step down in 2024 or perhaps become prime minister against what is really for so in fact it may be the load because he commented short time ago he has to work again. here because he's he's a broads who often he has problems with whom he has to sort very very very very hard. beginning to cry out resume he wants to lessen his load but of course he will remain the key decision maker he will pass some of the decisions to others which is the end he is the key decision maker i think the headline that came out of it was that no longer would the prime minister the government be chosen or the names put forward by the by the president would come from the people who come up words good plan yeah. yes but then if you look at those

who are in positions in the running the economy and so on. they're obviously there because of tension with the duma and with the people and so on and many people are now concerned about this publicly so therefore one russian one russian citizen and 6 is no loving living below the poverty line and therefore the people will want to know who's going to be the new minister who are you because you're going to solve this problem pushing the economy forward. to said we've got a $400000000000.00. economic project underway and that looks improving the economy health education and so on but if you look at the chamber has recorded its. investment last year and it. could be the target so therefore those projects we love in fact we achieve by 2025 but the average person is more concerned about the economy by living standards things out

and they want ministers who can solve the problems you can make the economy grow faster and make their living make their living standards higher and make life more comfortable for them. and it's got a long standing thing as the demographics were a worry there is again a push to try to get people to have more children so we want to get of more sure but that if you've got to work and stuff at the same time how it's all going to work how do you encourage people to have more children it's a huge responsibility to take all each debt that goes on for years and years it is a huge liability. per but the problem is that a cohort which is coming on to the labor market and would have children now is really the co what from the 1990 s. when the population within the birth rate was very low because of economic crises so there for there's nothing really present the government can do short of saying those who are of that age should have more children but of course there's grants for them so it's because the average person will say that's very difficult for us

because you've got a job. you're working wife is working as well and therefore we can't really have more than one child in fact some of them are saying we can't really afford one child so therefore you've got really i think to wait for another 10 years before the population then begins to increase because there are many more born after 2002000 to 2010 quarter is quite large so therefore the demographics will remain a problem but present but i think that 10 years' time when published will increase and keep on increasing but there are demographers who say that. russia's population will actually decline between now and 2350. and russia can attract immigrants from central asia north caucuses ukraine and so on to make up the population deficit but this is declining because russia trying to develop

a. labor of another can begin as it did before so therefore we're looking at i would say a 10 year window and in 10 years time the population will almost certainly increase where it forgets just now that all the despite all the economic difficulty 20082011 nonetheless russia's gold reserves i what it's got in store there for a rainy days back up to levels before you surprised to hear that there's some money to spend on this kind of stuff now. no not surprised because if you look at the the budget deficit budget surplus is the president and the oil price of gas prices a lot of military from there if you look at the reserves hard currency reserves of the central bank of russia the now something like $55540000000000.00 which is which is very very high indeed and gold is part of that so therefore the from from the

states called you there's no economic crisis that's reverend a very comfortable decision for a debt as a percentage of the gross domestic product a very low level from a financial point of view the russian state is ok but the real problem is the growth of the economy which is only about one percent if you like the economy is ticking over at present it works in the present model works which took a little bit only one percent and for those in poverty they want to see that increases and the real problem now is how do you mean crease the. rate of growth because this huge huge $400000000000.00 infrastructure project force education for health and so on that's underway not all being spent so therefore that's a real problem really quick one that it wisely really quick we talked about what's inside russia some of the stuff that was mentioned what about russia seen the rest

of the world i would interact to the rest the world put in stress russia isn't a threat to the everyman's now play catch up he said what message does that give to other foreign leaders what i mean by that. well it means by that that russia is now a great power and it's now in libya play a major role in libya it's in syria it's in iraq it's in the central african republic it's you know other parts of the world and latin america is village as well and so on so therefore russia if you like is a major player in the world and what is saying is we're sitting at the top table and if you want to show the problems of the world you have to talk to the us where we are a very big player and we will help restore those problems but you can't ignore us you can it sidelined us it's a russia not longer important and we can reach major decisions without russia the future belongs to a world in which russia is a major player and the united states will accept that. china has accepted that so if you look at russia china the united states those are the 3 major countries of

the world and they are playing an increasing role throughout the world russia's expanding its influence middle east. and so on and playing a major role in shouldering those problems the major problems so putin isn't a very strong point of view from the point of view of foreign flawlessly the influence of russia is growing and people respect now other countries spec russia and expect help from russia and the outlook for the economy is the major problem you have to accelerate if they accelerate growth if they can do that then they've solved their major problem. martin mccauley political analyst thank you as ever coming on and give initial thoughts from over there in london way thanks very much thank you a lot more to come on this as well as hopefully we're going back to sleep or trenker as well later on he's got an important guest that we think i'm going to

tell you with this stick with us want to get the cats out the bag they'll be going to him shortly let's look at some other news before that they were going to go full out with this. we don't miss our special guest when she turns up now the u.s. secretary of state has again been justifying washington's assassination of a top iranian general in a drone strike at the start of the year but in a thinly veiled warning also said that russia and china could be next in what's being called the did terrence policy kellam open picks up the story. in u.s. foreign policy buzz words are everything administrations love to have a single term they can use in order to explain their international actions so let's review some of the greatest hits showing defending the actions of the white house in dealing with international adversaries of the united states might pompei owes new favorite word seems to be deterrence reestablishing deterrence real deterrence military deterrence deterrence is hard to establish an easy to loose so according

to the white house and its surrogates the killing of top iranian general qassam solomonic was necessary as part of this deterrence strategy but want to lay this out in context of what we've been trying to do there's a bigger strategy a strategy to this we have reestablished deterrence but we know it's not everlasting that risk remains we are determined not to lose that deterrence but the iraqi prime minister has a different version of events according to the iraqi prime minister soleimani was on a diplomatic mission he was trying to make peace when he was ruthlessly cut down furthermore reports seem to indicate that somani was not the only official to be targeted reports now show that a different iranian general was also in their sights but the strike was unsuccessful so who else could now be on the list as the united states claims it has the right to assassinate top iranian general extrajudicial lee and explain later well mike pompei o has thrown not only iran but also russia and china into the mix we saw not just

in iran but in other places too where american deterrence was weak we watched russia's 2014 occupation of the crimea china's island building too in the south china sea and it's brazen attempts to coerce american allies undermine to deterrence so if the united states dislikes you it can pressure you economically diplomatically isolate you or brutally assassinate you this is geopolitics in the age of deterrence. mask scum and ask this idea of supremacy that we we have you know this is you can call it american supremacy that we can do whatever we want and it's up to us to decide who is a threat or not this is really really disturbing and very dangerous i think and it's not normal to hear this come an hour to somebody who is running the state department this is extremely disturbing and i'm very disappointed that demo ticket

political class is not speaking out against this. crazy idea that we can go ahead and just kill anyone we don't like it doesn't mean people are not guilty of things but if we take this principle and this. approach to every nationality to every country we are going to have a really really mess and our. next controversy on the 2020 campaign rally president donald trump's been out again this time heaping praise on protesters in iran claiming they're now supporting the u.s. he says. have you seen what's happened in around the protests are shy horse. track they put these big american flags on the street and the arabians thousands and thousands of radius were supposed to walk on it and trample the step that beat the hell out of it every one of them went around were going to come back

to that now though let's go live to try and use with the nk and the less that of the russian parliament up the chamber that simple guess we're talking about is crossroads in that i guess. but haven't you haven't hello again while you are absolutely right i did promise you to talk to someone very important just a few minutes and indeed like you said i'm joined by the chairwoman of the russian federation council valentina be on go to talk to our v.i.p.'s all have to switch to russian but we do have a translator to help us out with who was the last with. the enco welcome to it russia today think you for agreeing to join us so what can i say. a lot of important things that we have heard from mr and through them we thought we would hear shoes going in 2020 but there are worse suggestions so on. the constitution

and in the fields like we are talking about some long term things so what can you say about it is what does it mean why. such asking to limit his own authority is it in due time or it's delayed or into early people 1st and foremost the initiative forward by the president to amend the constitution is a very timely initiative. this initiative has been long discussed our country has been developing very fast over these years we've had a number of colossal changes which require us to clarify the cost. bhushan with to make it more up today this will not be a new constitution this is the present we do not need another constitution and these changes they will not and fact the pillars of the constitution the foundation will remain because these changes. well within the existing framework well within the framework of the dignity of the people at the same time the

president send a number of signals 1st the fact that this is multi-party system has. been well established we have the federal assembly in place the electoral reforms have been passed and after all the. president believes that it's possible and timely to give the pollen murders a number of functions the president has it's not just to change this is fundamental work very serious powers which in some other countries have something of the same kind of when the parliament has the right to appoint their prime minister and his deputies so it will help us to reinforce the federal assembly. as the main eastwood of democracy it helps to

reinforce the democratic pillars of our society of our country the president underscored that for our country is a very large country with many unique features and multi religious a multi national country this presidential. best solution but at the same time we can reinforce the role of the parliament which is good the upper chamber. receive additional functions that. preliminary consultations before. has the law enforcement agencies and or appointed is a good step forward that is the future dition to our arsenal of powers that also is going to make our law enforcement bodies more transparent and more responsible. they will be answering to the federal assembly is there she is

a very good democratic step forward also the council of the federation will be appointing prosecutors and judges all the way up to the prosecutors in the regions of russia that is another good sign of progress that shows that this is sizes that the people trust the parliament they believe in us and that is the response that comes from the president towards these requests these demand demand for changes. with this with our state i also think that this is going to be something very important for the council that will. make the situation stronger it has demonstrated its ability. mostly comprises the governess he has the regions and this. is a man can use them so that they have it in their hands they care by the ideals that it would have a say about the say that the policy is

a raise in very problematic issues they express their opinion this year they put forward the initiatives which is all that is that this is part of our constitutional war aids a well respected body and i think it was very correct to say as the reporter says that was how it should be clearly established clearcut you are interested in the constitution. and that is going to be done. with national to bully and media will live in a very popular. world. of the future after that we have more and more issues which led to the feel of sovereignty of state the flow easier for. the for interrupting you. there mr putin started he talked about the changes that could be in the certain stance of russian legislation our constitution bob certain elements up in

international legislation. is the instance is that the masses to be international community should something be afraid of anything that you will that is no threat to such norms they have been approved by a number of states it's not something. that we're only we want to do we are very responsible member of the international community and we were always being at the hearing most recently to every international obligation that we embrace and we never. backtrack on this obligations so such changes would make the constitutional our priority that is the supreme law that we must follow and that. is something that everyone in the country agrees upon and the constitution was adopted at a very difficult period in the life of our country and. now russia. is not

going to be signing any international documents any intergovernmental agreements the way that it was run counter to the constitution and i think that is only natural that is a reasonable step i think the worst that can see to our constitution. is seen as one of the most democratic ones. one of the most humane and just unfair once. all that gives me the reason to believe that there will be no major. out of the. for on the part of the international community. the typical person was this was a suit that was doesn't mean that everyone might not letting the people that talk to me in europe before are talking about all these suggestions about something that has already happened because the way i understand it of course being must be indoors by the society and the president said about their understanding in the

higher echelons of authority what is the next step in the well will be made so that everything that we are talking about was implemented. in this address a. key in the politics of russia. lines detox for all levels of government to see if these are our priorities now and we need to solve. them within the short and long term perspective so for us that is a priority to work on this address and these initiatives that we should include so today but this evening we'll be having a meeting to adopt a plan on the how to implement these initiatives as for many of the cost if you should. this is a tall order this is not going to happen overnight we need to be well prepared we need to prepare these amendments to be introduced later on and there's

vladimir putin underscored days documents they should be widely supported while discussed. publicly their discussion is due to take place a department. of public society the people should have a say about this. how much time. it's hard to say. of course we would like to see that happen this year. by the end of this year but there is a lot of work to be done and i thought about time it's about the quality of this changes and also it's about getting the consent on the people so these are our priorities now and. you were in the 1st tranche so it was very.