Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said he owed a debt of gratitude to oil companies TNK and OAO Surgutneftegas for providing the cash needed to keep Russia's seaborne nuclear forces in the Pacific afloat in 2002.
Then-President Putin asked the non-state companies to provide the funding needed to keep the Vilyuchinsk base on the Kamchatka Peninsula operating after the military proposed to stop funding and close the facility, Putin said in an article published in the government's official Rossiiskaya Gazeta today.
"Now we have a modern base at Vilyuchinsk that will soon" be home to a new generation of nuclear submarines, Putin wrote in the article.
TNK, owned by a group of billionaires led by Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg and Len Blavatnik, merged with BP Plc's Russian operations to form TNK-BP in 2003. TNK-BP is now Russia's third-largest producer of oil and Surgut in No. 4.
Putin's article, on national defense and military issues, is part of a series the premier is publishing that lays out his campaign platform presidential elections March 4.
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