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Meeting with Defence Ministry leadership and defence industry heads

May 17, 2018, Sochi

Vladimir Putin held another meeting on developing the Armed Forces.

The meeting participants continued to discuss the state defence order implementation, efficient spending of allocated budget funds, and improving the quality of equipment.

* * *

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,

Today, we will focus on implementing the state defence order and analyse whether defence enterprises are carrying it out in a good and timely manner, and also review existing issues.

I will give you a few figures so that you can assess the scale of the work and the complexity of the tasks.

In 2018, the Defence Ministry released almost 1.5 trillion rubles for the state defence order. The amount is fairly significant, and these resources must be used as efficiently as possible.

Most of the contracts have already been concluded. Under them, the Armed Forces should receive over 160 units of aviation equipment, 10 surface combat ships and 14 space complexes. Arsenals of the general purpose forces should be replenished with 500 units of rocket and artillery weapons, tanks and armoured vehicles.

Please note that all contractors are personally responsible for strict observance of the deadlines for the production of weapons and equipment and the approved delivery schedule, so as to keep up the recently attained high rates of rearming the Army and the Navy.

As before, the focus is on the Aerospace Forces, and this applies to all its components, including aviation equipment, air defence, missile defence, and, of course, space systems, including those designed for communication, navigation and various types of reconnaissance.

New operational tactical aircraft Su-34, Su-35S, Su-30SM, and modern attack helicopters Mi-28, Mi-35M and Ka-52 will be supplied to aviation units.

Anti-aircraft missile units will receive the latest S-400 systems and Pantsir-S complexes.

I hereby request that the commander of the Aerospace Forces and heads of the leading defence industry enterprises in the aviation and aerospace spheres report in detail about progress and whether everything is going as scheduled.

Our priorities include continued development of advanced weapons systems, which must surpass the best foreign counterparts. We are expecting the design bureaus and research institutes to come up with breakthrough, outside-the-box and effective technical and engineering solutions, which, among other things, should reduce the time and the cost of creating and introducing new weapons. Of course, quality must also improve.

Let us get to work.

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May 17, 2018, Sochi