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Participants included First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov, deputy prime ministers Alexei Overchuk and Marat Khusnullin, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Maxim Oreshkin, Economic Development Minister Maxim Reshetnikov and Finance Minister Anton Siluanov. Among other invited participants were Minister of Industry and Trade Anton Alikhanov, Minister of Natural Resources and Environment Alexander Kozlov, Minister of Transport Roman Starovoit and Vyacheslav Fedorishchev, Acting Governor of the Samara Region and Chair of the State Council Commission on Industry.

At the beginning of the meeting, social facilities were launched in a number of Russian regions via video link. Those included a regional infectious diseases clinical hospital that has started receiving patients in Perm, a new kindergarten building in Simferopol, and School No. 131 for 1,500 students that opened in Nizhny Novgorod.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues.

We have an extensive agenda today covering the main areas of work for the Government, but I would like to begin with the developments in the Kursk Region.

As you know, the Kiev regime attempted another major provocation, launching an indiscriminate attack with a variety of weapons, including missiles, against civilian facilities, residential buildings and ambulance vehicles.

Immediately after this meeting, I will convene heads of security agencies, the Defence Ministry, the General Staff and the Federal Security Service, considering the fact that it is in charge of border control. Our colleagues will report on what is currently happening in the Kursk Region.

But I would like to say that, following my conversation with the Acting Governor of the Kursk Region [Alexei Smirnov], I instructed several civilian agencies to provide the necessary assistance to people living in this region. I am also asking the Government to take up this matter immediately.

I am assigning First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov the coordinate these efforts at the initial stage.

As I have already said, we have a packed agenda dealing with essential matters. This includes the construction sector, and we will discuss it separately. We will also discuss the processing industry and several other matters.

Regarding the construction industry, I cannot fail to mention that its workers – millions of people across Russia – will be celebrating their professional holiday soon.

This sector is following an upward trajectory, and relies on cutting-edge technology, materials, skills and competences. Taken together, all these assets enable it to deliver on the most formidable challenges, while effectively catering to the needs of the Russian society and its people.

People working in the construction sector build housing and roads, they also do road maintenance, as well as build advanced manufacturing facilities and social infrastructure. In fact, this effort is changing the face of our cities, villages and of the entire country. And this sector has been setting one record after another.

In 2023, housing construction increased once again to over 110 million square metres. This enabled almost 4.4 million families to improve their housing conditions, including through the subsidised mortgage programme.

This year, over 50,000 people moved from sub-standard housing into new apartments, for a total of over 720,000 over the past five years. As of today, 41 regions enabled people to move out of sub-standard housing. We will carry on with this effort regarding housing, which was designated as sub-standard before 2017.

The programme to develop and improve public spaces and courtyards near residential blocks is also underway. We wanted to make it a participatory initiative. This year, over 17 million people expressed their views as part of voting procedures to select projects for creating a people-friendly urban environment.

We are now working on a comprehensive upgrade programme for the utilities sector in order to enable it to raise a substantial amount of funding.

Let me note the courage of our construction and utilities workers who are rebuilding Donbass and Novorossiya despite all the challenges and the fact that combat action is raging there. Over the past two years, they have built or opened 20,000 facilities, including housing, roads, and major infrastructure sites people need to live normal lives.

It is important to note that continuous work is underway on a national scale to develop every Russian region. One of our priorities is to create much-needed social facilities such as hospitals, schools, and kindergartens.

I will give you a few examples: a new specialised hospital in the Perm Territory has started receiving patients – a highly beneficial and important event for the region, which now has an additional resource to fight infectious diseases, to counter any potential outbreaks.

It is an autonomous up-to-high-standards medical complex complete with a hospital, intensive care, an outpatient diagnostic clinic and a specialised medical research department. I would like to thank everyone who participated in the implementation of such a significant project for the region.

As I said, we continue to build new schools, kindergartens and other social facilities. The new kindergarten in Simferopol will be a great contribution to the development of the social infrastructure in the Republic of Crimea, to support families with children. It is a modern building, which meets the highest safety and quality standards in place for such facilities.

A school has been built in Nizhny Novgorod. It is big enough to serve 1,500 students and has capabilities for regular classes, additional courses and extracurricular activities. It also has a gym, a conference room, a canteen, and a reference and information centre. I hope that it will become operational and admit first students by the beginning of this school year.

I know that the building teams have done their best to meet their deadlines and complete these important projects, and more.

Naturally, the projects I mentioned are far from the only ones. These are just a few specific examples of the colossal effort they are making across the country. Other schools, kindergartens, clinics, and rural health centres are opening in various regions, enhancing local social infrastructure, utilities and amenities.

We will certainly continue these efforts in the future. Plans are in place to build about 370 schools and kindergartens and about 340 health care centres in Russia in 2024 alone, as part of the national projects.

I would like to thank the builders for their professionalism, for their conscientious work. I would like to wish them all the best and every success on the upcoming professional holiday.

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