Trying to explain the causes of the recent sharp slowdown of Russia's economy, many local analysts tend to concentrate on technical particularities of the country's economic mechanism.

Typically, while doing so, they dismiss as "commonplace" and thus "impractical" such fundamental issues as the necessity to improve the political and investment climate, to radically revise the tax system and to stop discriminating against small and medium-size businesses — by setting for them clear and stable rules of the game.

Other observers, many of them foreign — such as Financial Times or Standard & Poor experts — point to basic negative features of Russia's political and business environment. They refuse to regard the current fall in growth rates as temporary and their turnaround as feasible.