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Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, Mr Matytsin.

I want to thank you for your work in the Government, for the joint work. These are not easy times, including for Russian sport. However, you managed to streamline work so that nothing waned in our country, as they say, but rather progressed, and progressed actively. Thank you very much.

I want to tell you that it was decided to give you a state award for everything you have done, including before you took a high position. That’s because you, as an international official, also had also developed sport, university sport back then. You held high level, high class international events. It is also largely a result of your work.

I hope that we will continue this work. I have some ideas and proposals. We are going to discuss them now. Thank you a lot. Let us talk about the future now.

Oleg Matytsin: Thank you very much, Mr Putin, above all, for trusting me to work in your team as part of the former cabinet.

We – me and my colleagues – tried to do as much as possible to preserve, as you rightly noted, the favourable path of sport development in the Russian Federation.

S solid foundation was built. Notwithstanding all difficulties, we held very remarkable events. And, of course, the priority was to work out and adopt a strategy, to make sport a standard of our living and a basis for cultural development. This is because our teachers always said (last year we celebrated the 100^th anniversary of the government management authority [in physical training and sport]) that sport is an ideology, sport is a keystone of the defence capability, sport is, in general, a factor of the national security on a par with education and youth policy.

This is why I am proud of working on your team. I hope you will trust me to keep working. We will do everything necessary to have our national goals achieved, and Russia is and will be our great sports power.

Vladimir Putin: We need a lot to do in this regard and in developing mass sports and physical training. There is much to be done in that.

The progress is obvious: the number of people engaged in physical training and sport is growing. However, we have not yet reached the benchmarks that are best for us and the goals that we set for ourselves.

But we will definitely do it, including with your participation. We will talk about it now.

Oleg Matytsin: Thank you very much.

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