What will remain of Fradkov...

Although he has a long way to go before he can catch up to the manner of speech similar to Yeltsin's prime-minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, Mikhail Fradkov in his almost four year tenure has left the Russian public with a bunch of strange quotes. Some are tough to translate into English, so I did the best I could with the others.

"It is time to grab the bird by the horns"

"You journalists, all write that we the siloviki don't know a thing about economics. Yes, I am not an expert in macroeconomics, but my goal as prime-minister is to not make stupid mistakes"

"We have to figure out where to place empty buckets to collect the oil windfall, and how to properly pour with them certain vegetable patches, and we should not forget about the seedlings"

"This question has two keys. One of them, you don't know where to inset. It is important to extract this key so it doesn't break when it is inserted"

"Just chewing, and chewing; when they will spit it out is hard to guess"

"I am happy that we created an investment fund. Although it is empty, it does not spoil the picture"

"How would you define civil service? It is a certain blockhead, who gets little money and always wants to steal something on the side"

"We have already exited from our short pants"

"It is highly unnecessary to show the prime-minister with his twist of the tongue. But try to see the mimics behind the words, even though I speak much more words than I did before"