The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino, First Deputy Prime Minister Andrei Belousov, First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko, deputy prime ministers Viktoria Abramchenko, Tatyana Golikova, Alexander Novak, Alexei Overchuk, Marat Khusnullin, Dmitry Chernyshenko, Deputy Prime Minister – Chief of the Government Staff Dmitry Grigorenko, Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Industry and Trade Denis Manturov, Deputy Prime Minister – Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy to the Far Eastern Federal District Yury Trutnev, Presidential Aide Maxim Oreshkin, Minister of Economic Development Maxim Reshetnikov and Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov. A number of ministers and heads of regions of the Russian Federation, as well as heads of the Federal Agency for Forestry and the national grid company Rosseti were invited to attend the meeting.
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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,
The programme to improve reliability of the power grid is our main topic today. Our speakers are Minister of Energy Nikolai Shulginov, Novgorod Region Governor Andrei Nikitin and Rosseti CEO Andrei Ryumin.
However, I would like to start by saying that the Government, as you may be aware, is about to complete the drafting of a programme to develop the new regions. In this regard, I would like to point out that this programme should, of course, lay out the federal ministers and deputy prime ministers’ direct responsibility for the final result, which, of course, can only exist in the form of improvements in the situation and public sentiment, in the way our citizens residing in the new territories assess what is being done by the local authorities and the Russian Federation Government.
Here is what I would like to say. Together with the Prime Minister and some deputy prime ministers we have approached this issue on several occasions. The regional authorities are responsible for tackling a large number of issues, but this is not a traditional situation, and I want you to keep this in mind. Without support from the federal centre, the local leaders will not be able to address the complex issues which, without exaggeration, have been piling up in these territories for decades and have been exacerbated in connection with today’s events and the events of the last eight years.
Therefore, please deal with this with full responsibly and understanding that there is no other way to resolve the extremely complex issues plaguing these regions. Also, please do not shy away from addressing these issues, even if they are not within your purview formally. All the same, your responsibility is decisive.
In this regard, I will ask Mr Khusnullin to say a few more words about this.
To be continued.