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The meeting’s main subject was organising implementation of the decisions the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations took on October 31, 2016, with particular emphasis on the President’s instruction to the Council Presidium to draft proposals for legislative regulation of relations in the area of strengthening the unity of the Russian Federation’s multi-ethnic people (Russian nation) by August 1, 2017. This instruction has already aroused much public debate.

Opening the meeting, Mr Magomedov said that the term ‘Russian nation’ is not new. It was used in the National Interethnic Policy Strategy approved in 2012 following a broad public discussion in all the country’s regions. This term does not replace but complements the constitutional term ‘multi-ethnic people of the Russian Federation’, because a unified political nation is no threat to the flourishing of the various individual peoples who make up the Russian Federation. Mr Magomedov also called for all points of view to be studied and warned against hasty and insufficiently considered proposals.

Following its discussions, the Council Presidium, seeking to organise the instruction’s implementation effectively, decided to establish a temporary working group that will include experienced, qualified experts in interethnic relations, academics, and Council members. The working group is headed by deputy chair of the Council Presidium, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Valery Tishkov.

The meeting also reviewed the Council commissions’ work in 2016 and made proposals for new areas of work next year. In particular, they proposed paying more attention to the implementation of the National Interethnic Policy Strategy up to 2025 at the municipal level, work with children and young people, and information work.

The Council Presidium took the relevant decisions following the meeting.