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Kremlin.Ru
November 14, 2005
[Putin] Opening Remarks at a Meeting with the Government Cabinet
The Kremlin, Moscow

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN: Good afternoon, dear colleagues,

Let us begin today’s meeting with some organisational matters.

We regularly examine together the issue of our economic and social development priorities. We have packaged a certain number of these priorities together into what we have called national projects. I want to stress that these national projects encompass only part of our priorities, because there are priorities in other areas too. Perhaps the most pressing and acute problems we need to resolve are in the areas of education, healthcare, affordable housing and agriculture.

First, as you know, the Council for the Implementation of Priority National Projects was created in order to better organise this work, and Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev was appointed to be first deputy chairman of this council. At the same time, however, as I said right from the start, the main work on these projects would be concentrated in the government’s hands. I have therefore accepted the Prime Minister’s proposal and Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev will join the Cabinet as First Deputy Prime Minister.

Second, as you also know, the participants in the meeting at the Defence Ministry last week expressed concern over the problems the Defence Ministry is encountering in carrying out its long-term development plans. These problems are linked to a lack of coordination between the activities of the various ministries and agencies. The Prime Minister has proposed that, in order to improve coordination in this area, Sergei Borisovich Ivanov will be appointed Deputy Prime Minister, while retaining the post of Defence Minister.

We all know, of course, that we can achieve effective results at federal level only if the government and the Presidential Executive Office work together. You also know well that, as it is said, it is through Siberia that Russia will grow rich. I think that the Siberians themselves know best how to achieve this, and this is why the former governor of Tyumen Region, Sergei Semyonovich Sobyanin, has been named Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.

Sergei Semyonovich has worked in the Federation Council, headed the Committee on Constitutional Legislation, and is well known to all of you. I am sure that the constructive, comradely and good working relationship that you have built up with the Presidential Executive Administration over these last years will continue.

To complete the picture, I can also inform you that [Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoys in the Volga Federal District] Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko and Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoys in the Far East Federal District [Konstantin] Pulikovsky are being transferred to other work. Correspondingly, new people are being appointed to replace them: Alexander Vladimirovich Konovalov, who formerly worked as prosecutor of the Republic of Bashkortostan, will take over the post in the Volga Federal District, while the representative in the Far East Federal District will be Kamil Shamilyevich Iskhakov, formerly head of the Kazan City Administration.

That is all I wanted to say to start with regarding organisational matters. Now let us discuss routine business.