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Indeed, the business has been growing so fast that Alexander Danilov, director of the CBR’s banking oversight department, told PRIME in an interview on October 9 there is a danger of a real estate bubble developing in the future.
Samolet business Samolet has been growing fast, concentrating on the enormous Moscow market. With a population of about 15mn people, including the unregistered residents, the city of Moscow is bigger than most central European countries. And if you add in the surrounding Moscow Oblast (which is a separate administrative region from Moscow City, one of only two city regions in Russia) then the population is even bigger.
The company’s strategy is to continue to focus on the lucrative Moscow market and the metropolitan area in particular, where average incomes are multiples of the national average and on a par, or better, than most European cities. However, despite a decade of fast growth in the boom years of the noughties, the housing supply in Moscow is still lagging behind demand and many Soviet-era structures remain.
2.8 ​ ​The switch from TV to the Internet is not making Russia’s youth more liberal
Another new poll from Levada (which is independent of the Kremlin and has received Western funding in the past) confirms this shift in viewing habits, but at the same time casts some doubts on its political implications. According to the survey, 69% of Russians say that television is their primary source of news. This is a significantly lower number than the 94% who relied on TV in 2009.
Meanwhile, 38% say that they get their news from online social networks, and 37% also get news from internet publications - up from six and nine% respectively in 2009, marking a profound shift.
Television is not only losing viewers, it is also losing their trust. Just 48% of those polled said that they trust TV the most, down from 79% 11 years ago. With fewer people tuning in, and fewer of them trusting what they see, television's ability to influence public opinion seems to be in serious decline.
This poses something of a problem for the thesis that the stability of the political system rests on its ability to manipulate public opinion by means of televisual propaganda. If that was the case, Putin's popularity, and also that of his government and of United Russia, ought to be falling. But this isn't happening. Why might this be?
One answer is that while Russian television does indeed take many of its cues from the government, it also exists in a commercial space in, which ratings matter. In his 2016 book, 'The Invention of Russia,' Arkady Ostrovsky analyzed the development of Russian TV under presidents Yeltsin and Putin, but rather undermined his thesis that TV was under the thumb of the state by making it clear that the shift in its political stance from the late 1990s onwards was a response to genuine public demand.
16 ​RUSSIA Country Report​ November 2020 www.intellinews.com