Government bailouts - Russia's latest fad? MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin would like everyone to know that just because Russia's largest oil producer, Rosneft, is requesting government bailout funds doesn't mean it's in financial trouble. It's just what everybody's doing these days. If I were the CEO of Rosneft, I would request money, too. Putin said in an interview with Russian state news agency TASS published Friday. Who doesn't ask for it now? Everyone's asking for money and hoping to get it. State-owned, publicly-traded Rosneft has requested at least 2 trillion rubles - currently about $42 billion - from Russia's National Wealth Fund. That's about two-thirds of the welfare fund that was set up to guarantee pensions, but now is being petitioned for help by major Russian companies and banks reeling from sanctions, the falling price of oil, a rapidly devaluing ruble and other economic pressures. Russia's top finance minds haven't exactly welcomed Rosneft's request. Finance minister Anton Siluanov said last month that any award Rosneft would get from the fund would "differ significantly" from their original request. And former finance minister Alexei Kudrin, who designed the predecessor to the Wealth Fund and oversaw the fund's creation, said in a Bloomberg article this week that if Rosneft gets the money it wants, the money won't be there when Russia really needs to tap rainy day reserves. But Kudrin's not in the Kremlin anymore - and Putin seems to think that if Rosneft plans to use the money for "well-specified purses" that deliver "returns for the entire economy," they could get at least some of the money they're after But not because they're desperately in need of it, the Russian president suggested. "We inspected the financial status of Rosneft recently and didn't find any problems there whatsoever," Putin said in the TASS interview. Simply no financial problems. Rosneft and its CEO, Igor Sechin, have both been targeted by Western sanctions, which have affected Rosneft's partnerships with Western oil companies such as Exxon and made it impossible to access long-term loans from Western banks. The company recently struck a deal with Chinese investors to sell a part of its Siberian oilfields to offset its debts, which amounted to about $44.5 billion in 2013.