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Taking part in the discussions were Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov, First Deputy Defence Minister Alexander Belousov, Chief of General Staff Yury Baluyevsky, the commanders of the Leningrad, Moscow, Caucasus, Volga-Urals, Siberian and Far East Military Districts and the commanders of the North, Baltic, Black Sea and Pacific Fleets and the Caspian Flotilla.

The meeting discussed the results of military exercises in 2005 and current and future issues concerning the Armed Forces’ development.

One of the most important results of 2005 is that the drawn-out stage of transformation and reorganisation has now been completed and a transition is now underway to planned military development and general expansion of the Armed Forces' possibilities.

Vladimir Putin stated that the Armed Forces are now working smoothly on a programme of planned military development.

He also noted the key aspects of this programme and the main issues regarding state defence and security policy. These include formation of an optimum personnel structure in the Armed Forces, re-equipping troops and technical modernisation, and developing an optimum balance of spending on maintaining and re-equipping the Armed Forces. By the end of 2015 the country should arrive at a situation where 70 percent of the defence budget is spent on developing the Armed Forces and 30 percent is spent on day-to-day maintenance. This balance of spending would enable high-quality technical modernisation to take place.

The future of the Armed Forces depends a great deal on military science and education.

Russia needs to preserve the best traditions of the Russian military school while at the same time constantly enriching it with new ideas and approaches, making extensive use of modern teaching methods and techniques and carefully analysing developments in military thinking in the world in general.

Raising the level of social protection for servicemen and their families is one of the key issues for military development. In particular, the President noted the need to get mechanisms for an individual mortgage loan scheme for servicemen up and running in full and as soon as possible.