Putin, speaking at a congress of his United Russia party in Russia’s northern city of St Petersburg, said gross domestic product would decline by 8.0 to 8.5 percent in 2009.

But the former Kremlin chief said Russia must fully restore pre-crisis levels of growth in two to three years and added that he saw cargo turnover and electricity demand rising in 2010.

Putin said Russia would widen its anti-crisis program for carmakers and that he was sure ailing carmaker AvtoVAZ had a future. He added Russia would help firms buy high-technology assets abroad.

But the premier said AvtoVAZ, which makes Lada cars, would have to modernize and that he hoped shareholders — which include France’s Renault — would conduct themselves responsibly.

More than two dozen others remained behind but were expected to come out as early as Saturday, the governor’s office said.

The deal was signed on Tuesday after Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s leader, met near Moscow for talks which also covered Russia’s plan to host a Middle East peace conference.

Egypt wants up to four nuclear power stations. An international tender to build the first of them may come as early as this year.

Mubarak said: “Egypt, in co-operation with its international partners and the International Atomic Energy Agency is going to develop this sector, including through the agreement we have just signed.

The CSTO is a post-Soviet security group comprising Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

“It is necessary to extend part of Russia’s nuclear doctrine, which covers the use of tactical nuclear weapons, to all members of the CSTO treaty as a deterrence guarantee,” said Leonid Ivashov, the head of the Moscow-based Academy of Geopolitical Sciences.

He said the existing treaty was too vague about the assistance, including military, which each CSTO country must provide to an ally in case of a clear and imminent threat of military aggression.

South Stream can be halted in the Black Sea by Ukraine and Romania on a legal basis, at no risk to themselves and with appropriate Western support, until access can be opened to Central Asian gas for Nabucco.

The grounds for halting South Stream are familiar from the debate on the merits of EU- and U.S.-backed Nabucco versus Gazprom’s rival project.

He goes on to outline the many reasons why South Stream would be bad news for Europe, Central Asia, and pretty much everyone except Russia. However, these complaints are not new, and while there may be a legal case to be made (I’m not familiar enough with the relevant local laws and treaties to say one way or the other), the political case is what is so worrisome. As I noted the last time the topic of Russia further monopolizing Caspian gas and thus locking out western efforts to diversify export (like Nabucco), there are many political and pragmatic reasons not to antagonize Russia through overt legal action, at least not just yet. Those have yet to be resolved.