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Before meeting with the President the students visited the Kremlin museums.

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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Good afternoon,

I welcome you all and congratulate you on this very important event in your lives today – your last day of school.

Something that might seem obvious, but that we don’t always fully realise straight away is that for all of us this last day of school is one of those things that only happens once in life. It’s a happy moment that you cannot draw out for longer, and once it’s over you enter a new life. Today, this moment has come for you and 800,000 other school graduates.

Seeing as we are here together at the Kremlin today, I want to take this opportunity to wish you great success in life. The circumstances of life have made you independent boys and girls. I am sure that in this sense it will maybe even be easier for you to adapt to adult life in some ways than for others, because you are used to looking after yourselves, and this is also very important when setting out into the new adult life ahead.

I wish you every success in achieving your goals. Most of you, I imagine, are planning to enter university, and I hope that your plans work out. But if things suddenly don’t work out as you hoped, which also happens in life, my advice to you is to not let it get you down for long, but start preparing for the next offensive: choose a different university, or try to get in again the following year. In short, do everything you need to do to reach the goals you have set.

I hope you had enough time to look around the Kremlin. There are students from different regions here today. You can introduce yourselves now, tell me where you’ve come from, and share your impressions of Moscow and the Kremlin.

I will stop here for now and listen to what you have to say. We can talk about any subjects, discuss whatever you want to discuss. There is no set agenda, and I am not going to give you any lectures. I just want to hear your thoughts and maybe make a few comments. Please, go ahead. 

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