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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

Today, we start the latest in our regular series of meetings on developing production sectors related to our country’s defence. We will take a look at the work underway on defence procurement orders, and review and readjust our plans if needed for the current circumstances and in light of the recent military exercises that took place. We will make a general overview of the work to strengthen our country’s security.

Practice has proven meetings in this format to be very useful. I remind you that the results that came out of the previous meetings were used to draft several concept documents, and we approved the decision to establish the Air and Space Forces, which means that the different units and the main tasks in air and space defence are now under single command.

The Armed Forces are receiving new strategic missile systems, atomic and multipurpose submarines, surface vessels. We are modernising the combat aircraft fleet and air defence systems, and supplying new arms and equipment to the ground forces and the paratroopers.

We also adjusted the plans for re-equipping our forces with modern arms, and organised stable work at the defence industry companies. In this respect, I want to say that our upcoming meetings, including with industry representatives, are extremely important not just for ensuring and improving Russia’s defence capability, but in the current economic downturn, are also important for developing the industry itself and the economy as a whole.

We all know how many people work in this sector, and we know that this sector is related to the high-tech production sectors and in this sense is vital for comprehensive development of our entire economy and for maintaining social stability. I mean this is in the sense that, as I said, this sector employs a large number of people, many highly qualified specialists, and together with their families, this comes to hundreds of thousands of people.

I want to start the meeting by noting that the companies are working steadily. The Armed Forces are receiving new strategic missile systems, atomic and multipurpose submarines, and surface vessels too. We are modernising the combat aircraft fleet and air defence systems, and supplying new arms and equipment to the ground forces and the paratroopers.

The timely measures we have taken have improved combat readiness and our Armed Forces’ combat capabilities. This has been convincingly demonstrated in the anti-terrorist operation that we are conducting at the Syrian government’s request.

The snap checks and numerous military exercises we have held recently have also confirmed a high level of combat readiness. The biggest operations training event this year was the strategic command staff exercise Tsentr-2015. A total 95,000 service personnel took part in the exercise, which tested new models of arms and equipment.

Of course, the conclusions and proposals following the results of these exercises should form the basis for our plans for military development and modernisation over the period 2016–2020.

We will start work today in the same format as before. Once again, I wish you all welcome. Let’s start our work.

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