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President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev: Colleagues, I feel that we have done the right thing in conducting a separate meeting on the development of the Trans-Baikal Region as a new federal subject, a very important and complicated subject. There are not very many such meetings held at the presidential level. I think that this also has a particular significance in implementing the decisions that we will be making today.

I would like to say once again that the situation is not simple; the situation, to put it lightly, is not great for making major investments. All around the world, there is a decrease in capital investments into various agencies and branches. At the same time, we must really select our priorities in making decisions regarding long-term investments and ongoing financing.

One such priority is the development of a range of projects in the Trans-Baikal Region, because we have spent a great deal of money, nerves, and energy on them over the course of many years. Some of these projects, as you well know, have been going on for over decades. We were able to reactivate them and give them a fairly notable push, and we cannot lose that.

Clearly, there are some things that we will need to reduce, but we must not reduce them in such a way that they would need to be reinstated later from scratch, just because sometimes, it is easier to start from zero than to reactivate it. We should not allow this kind of situation.

I think that the priorities I indicated, which were also reflected in the Governor’s speech, should be taken into account as much as possible; I am referring to a range of items that we talked about here. All decrees will be given, by which I also mean issues concerning provision of gas supply in the Trans-Baikal Region, and work on the “Housing” Federal Target Programme – resettling people from dilapidated unsafe housing, and issues regarding the construction of the Amazarsky pulp and paper mill, which we discussed earlier, as well as social issues, which our colleagues here were just talking about – regarding construction of centres and the function of the pension system.

By the way, I would like to draw your attention to the action plan for improving conditions for citizens within the social services system. Currently, we are working on this all around the country. I am not proposing to quickly build new facilities; of course, if you have the possibility to build them, then build – but we must, at the very least, create conditions that are safe and that won’t set extremely dangerous precedents – ones that, in recent times, have unfortunately begun occurring at a regrettably high rate.

I would like for all of these issues to be examined to the maximum degree and to be under control of the Governor and the Presidential Plenipotentiary Envoy. The head of the Presidential Control Directorate just checked the corresponding facilities in Sakhalin, and also looked at local ones – everything is very, very complicated, to put it lightly. We must make sense of the legal side, we must deal with the people residing here, and we must provide safety. Overall, all of these things must be completed. We do not need something extraordinary, but we do need to take care of basic things.

We need to continue monitoring the situation on the job market and the fulfilment of measures within the regional employment programme. In general, we need to select priorities that should be laboured over diligently, and we must spend every single day working on the projects that already exist, ones that we unanimously agree must be carried out, even in this current period. This is the main message that I would like to deliver regarding the outcomes of our meeting.

I have just received some information, should I announce it?

(Addressing the Governor of the Trans-Baikal Region, Ravil Geniatulin). Ravil Faritovich, they said that 15 minutes ago your grandson was born.

We give you our warmest congratulations. This is a very good conclusion to our meeting. It is a symbolic conclusion, we are very happy for you. We wish you success and, of course, health to your grandchildren and their mother.