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The Strong Ideas for a New Time forum has been held on the President’s instruction since 2020 and is used to gather socially important initiatives and projects submitted by concerned citizens from across the country. Each resident of Russia can use a special platform to share their idea or project, receive expert evaluation and support to get it implemented. This year, the forum hosted by ASI and the Roscongress Foundation with the support of VEB.RF received 30,731 submissions in seven areas of focus.

Following the plenary session, the President toured the exhibition of participants in the competition for new Russian brands, which is designed to support promising domestic manufacturers in all regions of the country. Vladimir Putin inspected the Creative, Food Products, Consumer Goods, High Technology, Information Technology thematic zones. The exhibition features about 80 displays from 27 regions of the country. In total, more than 12,000 applications were submitted to the competition.

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Director General of the Agency for Strategic Initiatives Svetlana Chupsheva: Mr President, friends, colleagues,

As is customary, every year we get together for the Strong Ideas for a New Time forum. This year’s is the fourth forum that has brought together thousands of people from every region of our country.

Over these four years, more than 88,000 ideas submitted by the people of our country have been uploaded to the forum’s crowd platform. They cover a wide range of socioeconomic issues, including quality of life, technological progress, professional training, environment, digital technologies, and, of course, the economy and entrepreneurship.

This year, the bulk of submissions came from the Republic of Bashkortostan, Moscow, and the Nizhny Novgorod Region. The crowd platform boasts more than half a million registered participants aged 25 to 45, with 75 percent of participants holding higher education degrees. In terms of professional background, science and education rank first among our platform participants, followed by civil servants and non-profit organisation employees. Digital technologies and the internet come third.

I would like to thank co-hosts of the forum – Roscongress and VEB.RF, as well as our Expert Board. Over 2,000 crowd platform experts review each submission, give recommendations, and ask questions, which makes it possible for the leaders to fine-tune their ideas and projects. I would like to thank Expert Board Chairman Igor Shuvalov who participates in the meetings and listens to presentations by project idea leaders. Alongside the Expert Board, we propose solutions that can be included in government programmes, among others.

Mr President, every year you support the initiatives and projects presented on the sidelines of the plenary session, which we then submit in the form of a report to you and the Government.

Over 5,000 ideas have been supported over that time. The project idea leaders have raised over two billion rubles to implement their projects; 1,000 projects were supported by all regions this year. Today, we look forward to learning more about several exciting projects and solutions from a variety of fields.

Mr President, you have the floor.

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much, Svetlana.

First of all, I would like to thank the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, Roscongress, and VEB.RF for organising today’s event. It seems to be a tradition, but just the name, of course, it sets the tone in a certain and very necessary way: “Strong Ideas for a New Time.”

Strong ideas are always needed because there are always challenges related to development. But strong ideas for a new time are especially needed today. Why? Because today – I’m sure everyone will agree with me – we are living through special times, and these new times mean that we are moving to a totally different level of challenges we face and meeting these challenges allows us to take the country to a new level of its development.

In today’s conditions, when we face so many challenges, we have a right to say every day – and I hope many will agree with me – that there are many more unresolved tasks than what we have accomplished already, in ensuring security, in economic development, economic sovereignty, and social challenges, but we still see progress in every area. The country is changing qualitatively from the inside, becoming more self-sufficient, more sovereign, more self-confident. This is Russia’s time.

I regularly travel around the country, and despite the fact that administrative agencies organise meetings with people in a regulated manner, I understand everything, I see everything, but even given these conditions, it’s all the same: people say what they think, what they want to say, and what they want to see in the near future as implemented ideas and proposals.

Svetlana said that events like today’s are usually held in this kind of format; I listen to ideas and suggestions and try to support them. It will be like this today too. But now, to be honest, it is also very important for me to listen to you in connection with the fact that the Address to the Federal Assembly is now being prepared: this is not just a discussion, it’s about setting goals, and of course, striving to develop and achieve solutions.

Considering the domestic political calendar, these goals will be set for at least six years. So frankly, I would expect you to come up with ideas, strong ideas that can be properly formulated – and not only in my Address but also in the national development programme for the short-term.

This has always been the case — ideas suggested at such forums were always very interesting and promising. I hope the same will happen today. Incidentally, and I think many of you will agree with me, and of course, this is mentioned less often now, but we are seeing that the goals set by our ill-wishers – to restrict and isolate Russia – have not been achieved. All these efforts have failed; this is already obvious.

But it is also clear that we have more and more supporters in the world, especially in the sphere – this is also something that everyone sees – that we call our traditional values. It appears that these are not just our traditional values – they are traditional values for every sound person, and there are plenty of people like that. This is not even to mention the countries that we are now calling friendly. But even in the so-called unfriendly countries “the safety cushion” for these traditional values is proving to be sizable and reliable, and we have many allies in these countries.

Why am I saying this? Because strong ideas that are born during discussions like this are bound to be interesting not only for us but also for our friends all over the world. And there too, we must work in the social policy sphere. We have many interesting ideas, and our partners are interested in many of them and are willing to implement them in their lives together with us – in the economy, in politics and in interaction in the most diverse areas. This is very important and very much needed.

In general, I would like very much to receive your input – I am ready to answer your questions if you have any. But I count on getting ‘hints’ from you, on our joint work so that together with you and then with public organisations and trade unions, together with top executives in different industries, CEOs of productions and our enormous plants, together with all those who work in the social area, to refine certain things and formulate them as fundamental tasks for the near future.

Thank you.

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