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Reports and remarks at the meeting were made by ASI Director General Svetlana Chupsheva, Chairman of the State Development Corporation VEB.RF, Chairman of the ASI Expert Council Igor Shuvalov, Special Presidential Representative for Digital and Technological Development, Director of the ASI Technology division Dmitry Peskov, Deputy Director of the ASI New Business division Mikhail Khomich, Director of the ASI Creative Economy Development division Yekaterina Cherkes-Zade, Director of the ASI Young Professionals division Alexander Vaino, and ASI Deputy Director General – Chief Operating Officer Georgy Belozerov.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, friends.

I am delighted to see you.

We continue to work closely on the practical issues of our economic, technological and social agenda. Today we will discuss the updated development strategy of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives until 2030.

As we agreed at the previous meeting of the Agency’s Supervisory Board, this crucial document must fully take into account the ASI’s contribution to the achievement of the national development goals and, of course, the profound changes that are underway in Russia and throughout the world.

At the same time, we should maintain the general spirit and logic of our operations at this new stage as well. I see the Agency’s special value and importance in the fact that you have always been several steps ahead in your ideas, aspirations and initiatives, suggesting unusual, out-of-the-box and forward-thinking solutions, expanding planning horizons, and offering a new vision of the future for our regions, cities, economic sectors and the social sphere.

It is extremely important that you implement the projects, plans and ideas of your creative teams, helping implement and apply effective experience and practices in the regions on a large scale, introducing advanced standards of management teams’ work, and working together with businesses, students and the non-profit sector to bring about positive changes in our cities, towns and villages. A combination of these efforts and the achievements of your supporters and followers creates the present and future of our country as a whole.

As I have said, we should formulate and fulfil new tasks on this solid foundation. In this context, I would like to mention breakthrough issues of fundamental importance, which I think should be taken into account during the implementation of your initiatives.

To begin with, taking into account primarily the demographic challenge, which now is the biggest fundamental challenge for our country, we must continue to focus our attention on spreading the best practices in the sphere of motherhood and childhood, improving the quality of the social sphere and adjusting it to the interests of the family. Overall, we must create the most comfortable conditions possible for large families consisting of several generations.

Helping socially vulnerable people, those who face challenges in their lives, is an important task. You have done a great deal in this regard already, and we must make sure that we introduce the practices we developed while working on the family agenda and demography in all our regions before this decade comes to an end. This effort must cover big cities and, of course, smaller communities and rural areas where people have been especially receptive to traditional values and hold them in high regard.

I hope that the Agency drafts a series of forward-looking tools that would enable small towns to lead the way in terms of improving the quality of life for their residents in the medium term. This includes, among other things, frameworks for developing education, healthcare, improving the environment, creating modern living spaces and restoring cultural heritage sites.

At the same time, the Agency has a quality of life ranking for Russian regions – it must continue to serve as a mechanism for assessing the performance of regional government bodies in developing their respective territories. I suggest that during today’s meeting we also review the 2024 results and designate the leading regions, as we have done in previous years, alongside the regions which have significantly improved their rankings and came up with innovative solutions for improving the quality of life for their people.

Moving on, we must offer people of all ages, including young people, more opportunities and spaces for engaging in creative endeavours. They must see that their home regions and towns, the communities where they live and work, are there to offer them more avenues for fulfilling their potential. We must create an environment and support mechanisms so that thousands of new companies emerge across Russia and expand their operations, including in remote, hard-to-access communities, and so that Russian brands can confidently tap into foreign markets.

It is your direct task to promote private initiative in Russia’s new, emerging sectors, including in creative industries, tourism, business-minded environmental protection projects and, of course, in science and technology. We must substantially increase the share of youth tech entrepreneurship in our national economy in the coming years. This is a major economic and social priority.

To achieve the goals we have set for ourselves, it is essential to continue improving the business environment. Here, we must align with the best global practices. Better still, we should aim to develop at an even faster pace and with higher quality – not merely meeting global standards but setting them, ensuring we remain fully competitive. Accomplishing this objective is one of the key benchmarks for evaluating the effectiveness of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives.

Furthermore, all your programmes are designed to make the efforts to achieve national development goals more comprehensive and holistic. This involves supplementing and enhancing the national projects currently underway with new ideas and proven tools that have demonstrated their success.

This approach is particularly relevant to national projects focused on technological leadership. Our priority here is not to replicate solutions from others but to offer our own. I therefore hope that your forecasts, along with the input from experts and the tech business community, will help identify how we can make a breakthrough today, bypassing several technological phases and significantly expanding the horizons of our development planning.

One example is the national project on the development of unmanned aerial systems, which was conceived and is being implemented with the active involvement of the Agency and colleagues from the National Technological Initiative. We will discuss the progress of this project in detail in just a few days during a dedicated meeting.

Friends,

I trust that, as we move into this new stage, you will also retain all the best achievements of which the Agency for Strategic Initiatives is rightfully proud, including its efficient feedback system and the mechanisms for identifying and selecting new projects through the Strong Ideas for a New Time forum. I believe the forum’s international dimension should expand, offering participants from other countries greater opportunities to propose valuable and meaningful initiatives and to implement them here in Russia.

In this context, I should note that almost a year ago, during the ASI forum, we discussed allowing foreign nationals who share our values to move to Russia and obtain Russian citizenship. Corresponding decisions have been adopted.

At my instruction and overseen by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Agency for Strategic Initiatives is creating a special project office to ensure full assistance for foreign nationals relocating to Russia. These foreign nationals will get help with settling down, finding jobs and educating their children.

We want to look beyond individual success stories. Our entire country must be at the forefront of building a more just development model relying on unwavering values that, as you all know, include a traditional large family, freedom and responsibility, every person’s ambition to benefit society and the people, as well as general well-being and justice.

These values underpin all your initiatives, including such systemwide, essentially worldview initiatives like building businesses’ social capital and expanding the role of the business community in social development and environmental protection. I am certain that your approaches and ideas are highly sought after in friendly countries. They should be promoted. Your experience should be shared.

Therefore, I expect the Agency to be proactive in establishing international partnerships with colleagues in friendly countries. This includes exchanging best practices, shaping policies for joint technological development, and implementing transnational environmental projects. Moreover, we certainly need to work on a vision for the future for our countries, which will enable us to take more calculated and precise steps and respond to emerging challenges in a timely manner.

Now let’s begin. I would like to give the floor to Director General of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives Svetlana Chupsheva.

I want to apologise as I have an international telephone call to make, and I will have to excuse myself during Ms Chupsheva’s report for about five minutes. But please continue. I will make the call and return to my desk.

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Vladimir Putin: Do you know what I would like to say in conclusion? We have discussed many very important issues and matters today. Cooperation with foreign partners in technology is a very important area. However, as I have already mentioned and would like to repeat again, it should under no circumstances result in the relocation of our engineering centres, our technological production facilities, and production facilities in general, abroad. This should never happen, on no account, even considering today’s realities. Let me say it again: notwithstanding any difficulties caused by logistics and so on. Sometimes, in some cases, it may be useful, but still it should not be a rule. That’s one thing.

And second, despite any current difficulties, we should concentrate these capacities within our country. It is better to think twice and find solution to some complex issues even despite complicated logistics than relocate these centres abroad. The more so as we mean creative industries and high technology. There is no need for any additional capacities in aviation or in shipping cargoes across seas and oceans. You understand what I mean, don’t you? High technology is a special line of business. Everything can be arranged here in a proper way. I make it a point.

I want to thank all of you very much for your work, all the members of the Supervisory Board. I hope this work will continue in the same way as before.