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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear friends,

Today, Russia and many other countries around the world are celebrating Cosmonautics Day. On April 12, 1961, Soviet officer Yury Gagarin paved the way to space for humanity. His flight became a great triumph for our Motherland, for all of our people.

I would like to extend my sincere greetings to all citizens of Russia and our compatriots and cosmonauts, all those who work in the rocket and space industry and, of course, the veterans and military personnel in the Aerospace Forces of Russia, who are performing their duty in the special military operation.

Our country has its own unique approaches to achieving its defence goals and conducting space exploration and research. They were established by the intensive work of many generations of technicians, engineers, and scientists, the organisational genius of Korolyov, Glushko, Tsander, Barmin, Keldysh, Pilyugin and many others whose names it is impossible to mention in one brief address.

Our victories –both in space and on Earth – are based on the limitless will of our chief designers and their ability to achieve results (let us recall when the first steps were taken in this area) even in the most complicated times (I do not think we ever had it easy). This is how they produced these surprising, unique results for us, for our country.

We became the first because the people working at plants and factories, design bureaus and research institutes subordinated their lives to the interests of the Motherland, to serving the people.

Today, our space conquerors are an example of how to strengthen our technological sovereignty. We must certainly continue their glorious actions and traditions and achieve the same striking, historical successes that all of us can be proud of.

It is gratifying that our rocket and space industry is consistently building up its potential. Today Mr Borisov and I noted that, thank Goodness, there were 100 trouble-free space launches in a row – for the first time in our recent history. This is certainly a very good indicator that the industry is confidently getting back on track.

But, of course, we must move ahead and conquer new frontiers. We must first make space exploration a much more important factor of national development in general, partly because our space industry is tightly integrated into the national economy. This industry is already integrated but we must raise its status to a much higher level, to a much higher altitude that corresponds to its very name.

We must focus on using near-Earth space. To do this we need to considerably increase the number of satellites in cooperation with technological businesses, and to move from research and designing to production line assembly. This is how it is done in the world, and we can do it as well, of course – we also talked about this today.

The creation of powerful satellite groups is designed to provide high quality navigation and communication, including satellite transmissions. This will allow us to make broader use of remote Earth sensing, primarily for developing and upgrading our vast territories, develop pilotless transport, and resolve global issues, including those related to environmental protection and climate change.

We must launch more autonomous space vehicles for research in our Arctic regions, establish, in cooperation with the Russian Academy of Sciences, a national system for satellite monitoring of the carbon content and study the ability of our forests and other natural eco-systems to absorb greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.

All these tasks are most important, and to resolve them we need to enhance cooperation between the state, businesses and science in outer space, to work together for achieving breakthroughs, including those based on unique developments in the space-related nuclear power industry and supersonic technology, which have no counterparts in the rest of the world. We must move quicker to the production of advanced, competitive products in the interests of our national economy.

We must certainly develop sovereign space systems and a new generation component base. We must design a Russian orbital station that can be an outpost of our country and allow us to explore and use space, primarily remote space. We should not forget about our country, either – specialists know that a new space station would also be oriented and probably primarily oriented to resolving the tasks facing our country in the broadest sense of the word.

We are faced with major research goals in this area that need to be consistently fulfilled. This is primarily about the early resumption of our Moon programme and missions to other planets in the solar system, as well as the development of Russian space observatories, which are instrumental in obtaining new facts about the evolution of the Universe and discovering dozens of stars at the very edge of our Galaxy and objects in outlying star systems.

Russia will continue to explore outer space, and we will definitely continue work in this area. For us, this is advanced technology that we need here on Earth. This is a whole new perspective on the development of our science and economy, and a reliable and up-to-date level of national security.

What is more, overcoming technological barriers when storming the Universe wields a special inspiring power and helps schoolchildren and students become trailblazers in the industries of the future. We need to help our young citizens conquer new heights.

Friends,

Our national goals and the aspirations of the youth must be matched by a system for training research and engineering personnel and innovative business and research team capabilities.

Without a doubt, to make our achievements even greater, we need an environment of creative scientific research, to make sure the values of our sovereign technological and industrial progress inspire our citizens.

I am sure the older generation remembers well the great enthusiasm they felt when reading talented books or watching talented films, when they as teenagers engaged in radio engineering and aircraft modeling and dreamed of becoming engineers, cosmonauts or scientists.

Today, the path to technological sovereignty lies through the revival of the best education traditions. Using the best solutions, we must create our own works of art, which will embody the dreams of the younger generation about discoveries and feats that can be accomplished in any profession and, of course, in outer space exploration.

The film crew with the symbolic name Vyzov (Challenge) has accomplished a truly civic act, worthy of a human being. They produced an excellent science and education project. We were the first to shoot a full-length feature film on board a spacecraft orbiting the Earth. Here, too, we were the first.

I want to thank everyone who took part in creating this film which is an unparalleled event in the world of cinema. Congratulations.

Enjoy the film and, most importantly, I wish new scientific, creative and technological achievements to the entire industry.

I have no doubt that we will fulfil our plans and offer dignified responses to all challenges.

Once again, happy Cosmonautics Day.

Have a good evening.

Happy holiday!