Gorki (near Moscow), 26 December: Today Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev met representatives of the expert community to discuss measures aimed at counteracting the financial and economic crisis. He invited the participants to make their ideas known. "Despite the fact that, I believe, the government is taking quite active and serious measures to counteract the financial and economic crisis, it's always good to listen to alternative points of view from both the expert and business communities," Medvedev told the meeting.

He invited them to put forward openly their ideas as to how to act in the current situation, to analyse the steps already taken by the authorities, to say which of them, in the experts' view, were correct and to suggest additional measures, if any. "My decisions will follow these proposals. I can't promise to back you on everything but, at least, I will listen to you," he told the experts.

The meeting was attended by presidential advisor Arkadiy Dvorkovich; Dmitriy Baldovskiy, deputy director of the Lomonosov Research Institute for Social Systems and member of the Russian Public Chamber; Sergey Guriyev, head of the Russian School for Economics; Ruben Aganbegyan, director-general of the Russian branch of the Renaissance Capital investment group; Olga Dergunova, member of the board of the Foreign Trade Bank; Aleksey Beltyukov, director-general of the New Gas Technologies - Management society; Vladimir Rashevskiy, director-general of the Siberian Coal and Power Engineering Company; Igor Kogan, chairman of the board of Orgresbank; Nikolay Kovarskiy, independent member of the board of directors of Promstroygruppa; and Yevgeniy Yuryev, president of the Aton investment group.