Full text of Putin meeting: not gone mad on nuclear weapons

Speaking at Russia's annual human rights council meeting, Russian President Vladimir Putin made some comments with global implications.

Below is the full text transcript of his speech:

Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, good afternoon!

First of all, I congratulate you on the upcoming Human Rights Day. Our meetings are traditionally timed to coincide with this event. It has a direct bearing on each of you, as well as on the Council's experts, consultants, and members of its apparatus.

Your common work to protect the rights, freedoms and legitimate interests of people is ongoing. For many of you, this, without any exaggeration, multifaceted activity has become, in fact, a destiny, a calling, a life work that inspires other people. You treat him with all your heart, spare no time or effort to help those who need support and care. I want to sincerely thank you for this extremely responsible and noble mission.

It is gratifying that your activity is not declining in the areas that the Council constantly keeps in the focus of its attention. These are education, health care, ecology, children's rights, the process of digitalization - there are a lot of very questions here.

I know that you have completed work on the draft Concept for the Protection of Human and Citizen Rights and Freedoms in the Digital Space of the Russian Federation and an action plan for its implementation. Your caring, persistent participation in solving the problem of providing medicines to all categories in need of medicines, but above all, of course, cancer patients, is also important.

Most of the Council's recommendations are being implemented by both the federal government and regional authorities. This suggests that the degree of elaboration of the conclusions and expertise that you offer is growing.

Today we are planning to discuss with you the development of legislation on non-profit organizations, ensuring the rights of citizens in litigation, preserving cultural heritage, and many others.

A large block is dedicated to a special military operation. From its very first day, Valery Aleksandrovich Fadeev and the majority of the members of the Council took an absolutely clear civic position: they explain the true reasons and the need for a special military operation, they fight open racism and aggressive Russophobia, blatant lies and vile, without any exaggeration, vile fakes that distributed by foreign media and other propaganda resources.

Your work to uphold the rights, truth, the rights of our people, people living in Donbass, our cultural heritage, traditional values ​​is of great importance.

It is important that you continue to expose the crimes of the Nazi regime, which has established itself in a neighboring country. After all, the rights of the inhabitants of the long-suffering Donbass for eight years, as we have repeatedly emphasized, were completely ignored by the world community - the so-called world community.

Our Council has repeatedly turned to this topic, sent information to the relevant international institutions designed to ensure and support human rights, promote human rights, but there - in many of them, in any case, in most of them, who today act as accusers, - pretended that they all at once went blind or deaf.

And only after the start of a special military operation, the UN Human Rights Council, the Council of Europe, and other so-called human rights organizations suddenly “saw the light” and shamelessly began to demonstrate their cynical bias, and, I would say, cynical bias, to shift the blame from a sore head to a healthy one, as we have they say.

All this meant that these structures were not able to fulfill their statutory tasks. Due to their obvious bias, Russia was forced to refuse membership in a number of these organizations.

I believe that our Council, as an institution that works with a wide range of public organizations in Russia and abroad, could become an effective international platform where the problems of human rights and their protection in the modern world would be discussed.

Existing approaches require a comprehensive analysis, since they have been used to achieve completely different, far from good goals. In particular, we see that the doctrine of human rights is used to destroy the sovereignty of states, to justify Western political, financial, economic and ideological domination.

Dear colleagues!

I thank you for your active assistance to our citizens living in the new territories. Some of you have become a real voice of the people there. So, journalist Marina Magomednebievna Akhmedova has been working in Donbas since 2014, she visited the front line more than once with the start of a special military operation, I know, she organized humanitarian aid to the residents of the liberated Mariupol and Volnovakha.

This year, the composition of the Council has changed significantly, and I would like to note this as well. It included famous people, leaders of public opinion. Among them are Elena N. Shishkina, a member of the presidium of the Free Donbass public movement, and Olga Yuryevna Demicheva, who heads the Just Aid of Doctor Lisa.

This structure - we know it well - organizes the treatment of seriously ill children from Donbass, provides support to the evacuees. At one time, it was Dr. Liza - Elizaveta Petrovna Glinka - who was the first to raise this topic at Council meetings, and the first, it must be said frankly, literally under bullets, began to take children out of Donbass for treatment.

I hope that your experience and knowledge will be of great benefit to our new territories in the development of civil society institutions and a modern non-profit sector there.

I also consider it important that the renewed Council continue to contribute to the implementation of the tasks facing the country and society, to work persistently and courageously, to raise issues that concern people and, together with the authorities, to seek their solution.

It is indeed a difficult time, and your opinion, your position, your public speeches and statements must, of course, be verified and work to unite society. As a matter of fact, this is how it happens.

I propose to begin our work. Please.

Valery Alexandrovich, please.

Vladimir Fadeev:  Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Dear colleagues!

In its work, the Council focuses on the main, most difficult circumstances of the country.

Special military operation. Many members of the Council have repeatedly visited the NWO zone, and you, Vladimir Vladimirovich, have just mentioned this. Colleagues work with refugees in Russian regions. The Council has established working interaction with authorities and civil society structures in new regions of Russia. Today the members of the Council will share their impressions.

And earlier, and even more so after the entry into Russia of new subjects, the Council recorded evidence of the crimes of the Kyiv regime against the civilian population. The corresponding bulletins are sent by the Council to more than 1800 addresses: to international human rights organizations, deputies of European parliaments, editors of leading Western media. At the moment, they recorded 4334 arrivals of shells and missiles of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Donetsk, Ilovaisk, Gorlovka, Makeevka, Rubizhne, Svatov and other settlements. These shellings were carried out not in the course of hostilities, their targets were not military facilities, but civilians, residential buildings, schools, hospitals.

In autumn, information was sent to international human rights organizations about the persecution of the civilian population in the Kharkiv region, executions in Kupyansk, shelling of the crossing in Kherson, and executions of Russian prisoners of war. We have not yet received a proper response. There are separate response letters from the Vatican, the Red Cross, from some deputies of the parliaments of European countries. International human rights organizations are silent.

The lack of reaction shows that international institutions for the protection of human rights are politicized and biased, in fact they do not fulfill their functions. The Western community refused to protect the rights of Donbas residents back in 2014, but the urgency of this problem became even more obvious with the start of a special military operation. Our Council will continue to seek the fulfillment of its statutory tasks by the UN Human Rights Council, the Council of Europe and other international institutions.

But at the same time, we started an international dialogue on the need to modernize and reform these institutions. In June of this year, at the St. Petersburg Legal Forum, we held the first round table on this issue. Despite statements by our German partners about their intention to stop the work of the Petersburg Dialogue forum, we are making efforts to maintain these contacts. Just now, in November, together with our German colleagues, as well as representatives of China, Argentina, Uzbekistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Iran, we held a conference in Yaroslavl on the theme of humanism and human rights.

Next year marks the 75th anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a fundamental document, it was important for building the post-war world order. But now it is often used by the West to impose its values. The new fashionable Western values ​​have been brought to the point of absurdity, they are simply destructive. It is unlikely that they will be accepted in other parts of the world, but they will bring a lot of harm.

The source of these values ​​is not accidental. The Western concept of rights and freedoms is based on the understanding of man as an autonomous individual. But for many peoples and civilizations, for the majority, individualism is not the main value. National models should take into account religious, historical, cultural specifics.

At one time, conceptual regional documents in the field of human rights were created, for example, the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights. I will pay attention: "and peoples." This is actually about sovereignty, about the freedom of peoples from external oppression: colonial times have not been forgotten in Africa. The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam was signed, which included, among other things, their view of family values, and these are, of course, traditional family values.

Western political institutions, instead of welcoming such an approach, such diversity - democratic diversity, ignore these documents. The West demonstrates disdain for the countries of the so-called third world, and this, I note, is the world's majority: most of the world's population lives in these countries .

It is necessary to look for true universality, to look for what unites humanity, and does not divide it. And such work should be carried out with full equality of the parties involved.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I ask you to support our joint work with the Foreign Ministry in this direction, in particular on the sidelines of the BRICS and SCO summits. I have already held preliminary consultations with the Foreign Ministry and with Sergei Lavrov.

partial mobilization. At the beginning of the partial mobilization, there was confusion in the work of the military registration and enlistment offices. In the very first days, the Soviet pointed out the shortcomings and called for strict and strict observance of the rules of mobilization. In particular, citizens were called up not in accordance with the Decree and the law on mobilization. The fulfillment of certain plans cannot serve as a basis for breaking the law. Errors were corrected, including for specific citizens.

In October, the Council prepared a report on the implementation of the Decree on Partial Mobilization. We received a detailed [answer] from the Russian Ministry of Defense, the profile committee of the State Duma on each item. All these issues remain under the control of the Council.

Legal loopholes emerged. The Council drew attention to the uncertainty with the possibility of an alternative civilian mobilization service. In November, this uncertainty was eliminated. There were complaints about the monetary allowance of the mobilized: the amount of payments varied significantly depending on the subject of the Federation. You, Vladimir Vladimirovich, corrected this situation with your decision

However, according to colleagues, in particular, our new member of the Council Alexander Kots, there are people in the area of ​​the SVO who have not received anything at all for four months, someone has not received regional surcharges. These are not mass phenomena, but each such case must be dealt with.

There were many cases of overpricing of equipment - both when the mobilized citizens bought it themselves, and when the regional authorities made bulk purchases. On the whole, we managed to cope with this too, state institutions worked quite quickly. Nevertheless, now in some parts there are problems in providing the mobilized with winter equipment.

In the current situation, the focus of the Council is shifting towards the families of military personnel. In this work, an informal, human approach is very important. I am sure that the new members of the Council – Yulia Belekhova, head of the committee of families of the Fatherland’s soldiers, Elena Shishkina from the Free Donbass movement, Olga Demicheva – “Doctor Lisa’s Fair Help”, Ekaterina Smoroda, Ombudsman for Children [in the Ulyanovsk Region], and others – will accept the most active participation in this work. They are already doing this seriously.

About some other areas of work.

Digitalization. As you said, Vladimir Vladimirovich, on your instructions, the Council, together with the Government, developed a concept for protecting human and civil rights and freedoms in the digital space, and a draft decree on this concept is being prepared. But already now, without waiting for the approval of the concept, it would be possible to take a number of measures aimed at protecting the personal data of citizens. Colleague Kirill Kabanov will tell you more about this.

Probation Law. The Council traditionally pays attention to the situation of persons in places of detention. A draft law on probation has been prepared in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice of Russia. A study is underway of the positive experience of resocialization of convicts who are involved in work through correctional centers. A very positive example - we studied it and went there - is the experience of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug - Yugra.

Memory of victims of political repressions. The Council continues to participate in the implementation of the State Policy Concept for perpetuating the memory of victims of political repression. In November, the interdepartmental working group held an off-site meeting in Tomsk: the memorial museum "Investigation Prison of the NKVD" was opened there. Work continues, together with the leadership of Moscow and the Moscow region, to create a museum at the Butovo training ground.

Colleagues will tell about other problems, about how the Council helps to solve these problems.

The report is finished. Thank you for your attention.

Vladimir Putin:  Thank you very much, Valery Aleksandrovich. You have noted some things, I will not comment on everything.

Regarding the problem with the equipment. It seemed to me that everything was already decided. However, if something else requires our special attention, then, of course, I would ask you to provide additional information - we will definitely deal with this, and as soon as possible.

And the second important topic is support for the families of our mobilized children. Of course, this should be in the field of view of the entire society, the state, and, of course, I very much count on your support, on your assistance in the work in the regions. This is the sacred duty of all leaders, leaders of all levels, and public organizations too. Of course, there are probably a lot of questions here: this also applies to timely payments of appropriate financial support, and many families of mobilized children simply need household assistance. Therefore, I very much hope that this work will be joint and effective.

As for perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repressions, we should not forget about this work, in any case. This is a difficult, difficult page in our history. History is what it is, nothing can be hushed up here - I have said this many times - nothing can be allowed to be used as a tool to fight against Russia in general, and especially today in particular. But we, objectively assessing everything that has happened in our history, must react accordingly, including perpetuating the memory of the victims of political repression. Agree completely.

Let's continue. Please, Akhmedova Marina Magomednebievna.

Maria Akhmedova: Mr  President, good afternoon!

This is not how I planned to start my speech, but yesterday in Donetsk there was again heavy shelling, people were killed, and among them a member of our group, our colleague Maria Pirogova. She was a volunteer and a deputy of the DPR, the girl was only 29 years old. From the beginning of February, we began to collect money to help people from the liberated territories, we collected it on Masha's card. They transported aid to Mariupol, to Volnovakha, to the front zones. Yesterday the Ukrainian "Grad" arrived, and Masha was simply torn to pieces. I know that you have already posthumously awarded her the Order of Courage, but I still felt that it would probably be important if I told you about her now and in general about her here and now.

I would also like to say – this is my personal opinion, this is really my personal opinion – that I understand the justice and inevitability of conducting a special military operation. I first came to Donetsk in 2014, when everything was just beginning there. I saw how people suffer and die under shelling. These people, in fact, were killed only because they wanted to be Russian, which they were, they wanted to continue to speak Russian and they wanted to be with Russia. And then, in 2014, I was very surprised why the world, which calls itself civilized, does not pay attention to these victims. But then I realized that the people of Donbass are just second-class people for them. This, of course, was unfair, and I am convinced that this would not have stopped by itself, it had to be stopped.

As for the inevitability. In 2014, I worked on the Maidan and then for the first time in my life I saw what torchlight processions of nationalists are, I heard Nazi chants. The protesters then said that they came out for a better life, but for some reason all their protests were accompanied by anti-Russian slogans all the time. From us, Russian journalists, they demanded that we begin communication with them with an apology for the fact that we are from Russia. Of course, I have never done this - I am proud of my belonging, but nevertheless it was obvious to me that this aggression would grow and it would not stop on its own.

And there's something else that's important to say. All these eight years, at some points, I even took offense at you, because you did not make a decision to annex the Donbass. I hoped that you would accept it, but there were times when it was very difficult to hope. And, of course, I realized that you are doing everything possible to prevent what is happening now, that is, I understood why this decision was not made, but, on the other hand, what was happening had to be stopped - it was unfair. In the end, I also understood that if you don’t decide to return Donbass home now, then no one will do it later, and we will miss this historic opportunity. So thanks. Thank you for bringing our people home.

And I must also say thank you for the demobilization of the students of the DPR and LPR. Since February, I have constantly met these 18-year-old children with machine guns in the front zones, and I must say that they never complained, they did not say: “Bring us home,” they served normally where they were sent. But the thought that they were ten years old when Ukraine attacked the Donbass, and that they had practically never seen childhood, still haunted. It was fair to return them home after the Donbass became part of Russia: after all, Russian students are not subject to mobilization, and students of the republics have also become Russian.

And now I am authorized by people to ask you to demobilize other people - these are prosthetists. There were many good prosthetists in the Donetsk Orthopedic Center, but in March almost everyone was mobilized, that is, everyone - only one remained, and he is now working day and night. A queue lined up for him, a huge queue of civilians and military men. We know that the republics of Ukraine are regularly sprinkled with petal mines: people, children step on these mines, die, lose limbs, they need prostheses. But there is [only] one specialist, and besides, components from Germany take too long, and we have problems with our own, unfortunately.

Plus the military. The military is, perhaps, even the main topic, because on the front line I constantly met people with artificial limbs. They are ready to return to the front if they have prosthetics, and they certainly believe that they will bring victory, because they have the experience and they have the spirit. Now their stumps have already healed, but there are no prostheses. And recently, one of the prosthetists came on leave, he went to the [orthopedic] center in Donetsk and said that when his comrades-in-arms found out that he was a prosthetist, they yelled at him: what are you doing here, you are much more important to us in the rear. And this is so, because you cannot bring up a normal prosthetist in one year.

Before meeting with you, I even visited our military hospitals - these are Burdenko and Vishnevsky, to see how their rehabilitation process is going. What can I say: this, of course, is close to ideal, although there are some hitches with prosthetics. But, for example, in Donetsk there is not even a walking rehabilitation specialist, because he is also mobilized.

It is necessary to return the prosthetists - both civilians and the military are asking for this. And probably think about doing something so that we have our own components - components for creating prostheses.

That's all.

Vladimir Putin:  I will start from the beginning – during your speech, which I drew attention to.

You spoke about the shelling of Donbass, the cities of Donbass and the lack of response from some, almost all of our - in quotation marks, you can already say - "Western partners". These human rights organizations, Western human rights organizations - now we have finally convinced ourselves of this - were created not as an instrument of the struggle for human rights, but primarily as an instrument of influence on the domestic politics of Russia and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Yes, there are, of course, various human rights organizations in the West, but they were mainly created precisely for these purposes. In order to appear neutral, they occasionally mentioned human rights issues in their own countries in passing, but this is more of an exception. They were mainly engaged in professional work on the Russian and post-Soviet track - that's what they were created for, it was already obvious. This is the first.

Second. The fact that they previously, for eight years, did not notice the tragedy that took place in the Donbass is the best confirmation of this, what I said, and what Valery Alexandrovich spoke about, and you just mentioned .

As for the shelling of settlements in Donbass. You mentioned one of them, where your colleague died. Yesterday I spoke with the head of the Donetsk Republic, Denis Pushilin called me. Indeed, strikes are delivered directly to residential areas. Well, no one can know about it! Everyone is silent, as if nothing is happening. It's terrible, of course.

You said that the people of Donbass are treated as second-class citizens. You know what I would like to note in this connection: for those who have to monitor human rights - and I just said for what purposes, in my opinion, most of the so-called human rights organizations in the West were created - for them, people in general don't matter. It's not that they consider these people second-class people - they consider Russia a second-class country that simply has no right to exist at all. That's the thing - that's the whole problem and the whole trouble. This is what we are dealing with today. We have been dealing with this for a long time, throughout our history, and today it is most clearly manifested.

Let's start with what we have. There can be only one answer from our side: a consistent struggle for our national interests. We will continue to do so, and let no one count on anything else. Yes, we will do this in various ways and means, first of all, of course, we will focus on peaceful means, but if nothing else remains, we will defend ourselves with all the means at our disposal.

Regarding the demobilization of students of Donbass. Yes, of course, these territories, the republics became part of Russia, so Russian legal regulation should fully apply to them. It's not an easy, lengthy process that requires a certain transition period, but there are things that need to be done right now, and the demobilization of students is one of those things. But I must say that not all Donbass students took advantage of this right to demobilization.

I just, literally a day ago, met - maybe you noticed - with volunteers. And the winner of this competition, he is from Donetsk himself, to me later, after this event, - we literally had a very short talk with him, - said that, yes, of course, this was very positively received in Donetsk and in the Donbass as a whole, but he knows people, knows his comrades who did not want to be demobilized, but continue to participate in hostilities.

As for the demobilization of some specialists, including doctors and prosthetists, of course, this needs to be considered, and we will definitely do it. But here, in general, we need to take a more serious approach to these issues that arise, namely support and assistance. As you know, I recently met with the mothers of the guys who take part in the special military operation, and some of them raise questions about helping injured, wounded and disabled children. Here, of course, it is necessary to organize not only prosthetics in a modern way - we have all the possibilities for this - it is only necessary in a timely manner, now this time has just come, to expand the capabilities of our respective specialized enterprises and organizations and organize this work. This is the first.

Second. We need to improve the equipment, we need to provide medicines to everyone who needs it. It is necessary to establish a system of rehabilitation and payment for travel to the place of rehabilitation and back, because a wounded person, especially one who has received a disability, for example, it will be difficult or impossible for him to even get to these places of rehabilitation. There is a whole range of work to be done on this issue.

I think that it will be necessary in the very near future to create a special center in the social block of the Government that will deal with this, and somewhere at the level of the deputy governor for social issues in all regions of the Russian Federation, such a line of work should be identified and, as this work unfolds, create a whole system of support for people who need help from the state. All this should be implemented together, and in the shortest possible time. We will definitely be doing this.

Thank you for raising this issue. The government will receive a corresponding instruction literally today or tomorrow.

Thank you very much.

Please, Valery Alexandrovich, who is next with us?

Vladimir Fadeev:  Vladimir Vladimirovich, Tatyana Georgievna Merzlyakova, Commissioner for Human Rights in the Sverdlovsk Region. Tatyana Georgievna takes care of the wounded, and prisoners, and refugees, and families of military personnel. She is doing a great job in the area we are talking about now.

Tatyana Georgievna Merzlyakova.

Vladimir Putin:  Please.

Tatyana Merzlyakova:  Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,

The strongest information component of the special operation allowed people to decide, make a choice, and the vast majority immediately began to look for options on how to help the country these days. But there were also those who left, believing that this was not their life. There were also those, and this is the most difficult, albeit a small category, who remained in the country and rejoiced at its failures somehow in the rear, at the front.

They wrote a lot on social networks, and the first thing that I, as a human rights activist, could not endure at all was that we wrote that the guys had nowhere to wash their socks, that they lived hungry for weeks, that there were outbreaks of pediculosis at the front. Therefore, we, together with the command of the Central District, decided that I would go and see, as the command says, with my own eyes, without double standards, what is really happening.

I drove through four of the strongest divisions, and I saw baths and interesting kitchens everywhere, and, of course, I visited our hospitals where golden doctors work - just golden doctors - I am responsible for every word. And after I got back, I told it to all our local papers, and of course it put the mothers at ease.

After some time, a new component of informational fakes appeared - this is that many of us want to leave the front, that they are kept by force in some kind of concentration camps, prisons. These are three psychological centers where they work with children.

I went to the front again, this time I visited 12 units. Yes, there were guys who wanted to go, because - these are 80 percent of the guys with whom I talked, and some of the guys were brought to me by the commanders themselves - because something is restless at home: they need help, because their mother is sick, she must be brought to the regional hospital from a small village, and so on. And we worked out these appeals during the week when I returned. We have a big - I use our language, I'm already a little used to front-line life - coherence has already happened in our team, together with Tatyana Nikolaevna Moskalkova, and our human rights commissioners in all regions were very attentive to the fact that I asked to do.

I can give an example. Our Tuvan colleague reviewed two appeals in half a day and completely removed all questions. And so almost everything. But nevertheless, I must admit, maybe even at the level of emotions, because when you return from there, you perceive this misunderstanding very painfully: “We do everything according to the law, what do you want here? What's with the special operation?"

When the mobilization happened now, on the contrary, thank God, all these families were surrounded by warmth and attention here, in the territories. And I see this well, because we do it together with Tatyana Nikolaevna when we meet online and directly discuss with our colleagues what is being done in the territories.

But, I will say, now there is some other problem. Probably, after all, the mobilized are people who were not ready to leave this life, and their families were not ready, so we have received 13,000 calls to our hotline in the Sverdlovsk region since the beginning of mobilization. Appeals are very different, we remove them too. But nevertheless, this efficiency is not enough in communicating with their loved ones at the front.

I know that a field mail has been created now, one of these days. Vladimir Vladimirovich, we still need to do everything possible to make it work in the shortest possible time, because it’s one thing to have a courier connection that works at the level of, let’s say, high-ranking people, and another thing is still what relatives are waiting for . Our kids can't carry their phones with them - in most cases, this is to cause fire on themselves, and relatives are very worried. I start talking about this with the command, they tell me: “What do you want? This is a military operation." And I say: “What do you want? It's a mother's heart."

Another very important point. Of course, now, I emphasize once again, a lot is being done on the ground, but I think that it is necessary to make sure that with these guys who have already begun to return with injuries, sometimes with severe ones, I support Marina [Akhmedova] completely in the situation with prosthetics - this needs to be organized very seriously, we have these cases.

These guys need, first of all, it seems to me, that participants, war veterans, work with them, because there is no need to turn these guys into a socially vulnerable category - disabled people. [It is necessary] to continue [to be] defenders of the Fatherland and keep in the same tone and in the same rhythm in which they are used to living, and for this, these categories of ours must work with them too - these public organizations should be, first of all, next to them .

My grandmother, a widow of the 1945 model, when she passed away, thanked you, including you, that at least at the end of her life she heard that they began to thank widows that they began to give apartments to veterans of the Great Patriotic War. I don't want to repeat those mistakes. We must remember that even now we still have a debt to war veterans, and now we must do everything possible so that from the first days the guys understand that they are greeted as defenders of the Fatherland.

And the last. Vladimir Vladimirovich, our hotline receives a lot of questions among calls from relatives and friends, and again, a lot is related to what is written in the networks: will there be another wave of mobilization, what should we prepare for? Still, people should see this perspective as well. And with the category that is now on the fronts, we have learned to work, we will learn to work further.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  Tatyana Georgievna, first of all I would like to thank you for what you are doing, this is extremely important. Such work is always important, and now, in today's conditions, even more so.

I will not now give an assessment to those who, as you said, left the country during the mobilization - this is a separate topic, there is a lot to be said on this topic. You said it was "not their life". I don’t know, maybe someone thinks that this is not even their country. Now, I repeat, I would not like to go into details.

As for the problems in the zone of the special military operation: they certainly were. They probably still exist. And they can occur anytime and anywhere in the operation area. We need to constantly do this, constantly analyze what is happening there, and have feedback. This is exactly right. And everyone needs this - both our guys who are at the forefront, and society, and the state, because the quality and efficiency of our combat work will improve.

About leaving positions. In Ukraine - you know about it - they are shot on the spot. Moreover, even mass executions are carried out directly in public, in front of the formation or without it. This is well known to everyone, it is no secret. Not only do we have nothing of the kind, we don’t even have any, as you said, camps, zones, and so on: this is all nonsense, these are fakes that have no basis.

But what would I like to say in this regard? Are there people who leave combat positions? Yes, this has happened. Now it's getting smaller and smaller. What is the problem? After all, a person who enters the war zone from a peaceful life - even after a certain preparation - he cannot but experience certain feelings inherent in an absolutely normal person.

The vast majority of these people return to combat duty voluntarily - the vast majority, even after being wounded. Why? Because there is a period of adaptation to the conditions in which people carry out military service. And I repeat: we have nothing of this mass nature. To do this, you just need to work with people. Here, of course, we need subtle, calm, balanced individual work with each person. In general, this is getting better and better for those people in the Ministry of Defense who should be doing this professionally. We have problems with leaving, say, positions, with some kind of desertion - there is no such problem in the zone of a special military operation.

Yes, there have been such cases, and there is no need to turn a blind eye to this. I have already explained and I speak quite frankly what this is connected with. Any normal person who finds himself in a situation where bullets fly or shells fall cannot, in a certain way, even at a physiological level, not react to what is happening. But after a certain period of adaptation, the guys fight brilliantly.

I have already said many times: they are really heroes and deserve, as you said, to be treated like that after completing combat missions and after returning from the combat zone. This is completely obvious. And the country, society, including public organizations, should create an appropriate environment and appropriate conditions around these guys. I have already said it and I want to emphasize it again: this also applies to support and assistance to the families of our fighters. [We] must treat everyone, as you said, I wrote down, as the defenders of the Motherland. This is exactly the kind of environment around our guys that needs to be created.

Now, regarding the possible mobilization, further mobilization, rumors in this regard. Look, out of 300 thousand mobilized - our fighters, our men, defenders of the Fatherland - 150 thousand are in the zone of the operation; 150 thousand, that is, half - in the troops, in the grouping. Of these 150,000 in the group, only half - that's 77,000 - are directly in combat units. The rest are on the second, third lines, performing the functions, in fact, of the troops of the territorial defense, or undergo additional training in the zone of the operation.

Another 150 thousand, that is, half of all mobilized citizens, are not in the group at all: they are still at the training grounds and in the training centers of the Ministry of Defense, where they receive additional training. If I can say so and call it that, it is the so-called combat reserve. Half of all mobilized, 150 thousand.

Under these conditions, talk about some additional mobilization measures simply does not make sense, and today there is no need for the state and the Ministry of Defense. Here is what I would like to answer to your question.

Please, Valery Alexandrovich, go on.

Vladimir Fadeev:  Yevgeny Nikolayevich Myslovsky, Honorary President of the Antimafia Regional Public Foundation for Combating Organized Crime and Corruption. Evgeny Nikolaevich is a famous investigator for especially important cases of the Soviet prosecutor's office.

Evgeny Nikolaevich, please.

E. Myslovsky:  Good afternoon!

First of all, although I am not authorized to speak on behalf of the entire nation, I will nevertheless say that the entire nation is waiting for results.

In particular, I want to talk about one aspect of this operation. There is a lot of talk about war crimes. And indeed, more than 4,300 artillery arrivals, more than ten thousand civilians killed in Donetsk alone. It turns out that they talk a lot about crimes, and Comrade Bastrykin says that criminal cases are being initiated in our country, but no one sees the results of the investigation, no one hears, no one knows anything about it. And I understand why - because each investigator has, excuse the expression, a bunch of these very facts, they are simply not able to cope. This is one moment.

And one more aspect of the same problem. Now new territories have appeared, new territories require staffing for law enforcement. And where to recruit these people now, how to recruit them is also a problem. We have discussed such a proposal among veterans: why not call on some of the veterans? By the way, we have different veterans. The man served 20 years and retired. Some have long retired, some are very old, and some are still quite mature people, and they express their readiness to serve the Motherland more.

Moreover, they are ready to act as mentors, organizers, suggest how to organize the investigation to the young guys who are going. I would think that it would be necessary to give similar recommendations to Bastrykin and Krasnov in order for them to still look at these veterans. We have more than a thousand such people across the country. It seems that not so many people are needed for this purpose, money for this, in general, is not very much, and the effect, both social and organizational, economic, would be quite large. Because people are still able to serve the Motherland.

And one more aspect in the same plan. You know, I would say, a lot of people are waiting for the political significance of investigating war crimes. They talk about it a lot, again, there are few visible results. It may be worth recalling our history, when in 1942, by the way, exactly 80 years ago, if my memory serves me, on November 2, 1942, an emergency state commission was created in the USSR to investigate the crimes of the Nazi invaders. This commission worked for almost ten years - until 1951. As a result, a huge amount of materials was collected, which served as the basis for presenting them as incriminating material at the Nuremberg trials.

It seems to me that if such a state commission were created now, first of all, we would not sit as we are now. The French, perhaps, put forward: we will create an international tribunal. Maybe we could prepare these materials, I mean the state commission, on these crimes? And it is worth, in my opinion, to pay attention to this historical aspect and still see if we need to resolve this issue here now.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  Evgeny Nikolayevich, when you said that everyone is waiting for the results, did you mean the results of the SVO?

Yevgeny Myslovsky:  No, not CBO, CBO is a long process. The results of the investigation of criminal cases. You see, what a thing: they say - they are investigating, investigating, but there was only one verdict, and then some ...

Vladimir Putin:  I understand.

As for the long process and the results of the JEE, of course, this is a long process, maybe. But then you mentioned that new territories have appeared – this is still a significant result for Russia, this is a serious issue. And, to be honest, the Sea of ​​Azov has become the inland sea of ​​the Russian Federation – these are serious things.

Yevgeny Myslovsky:  Everything is correct, but this needs to be equipped.

Vladimir Putin:  Yes, yes, but that is a different question. Peter I was still struggling to reach the Sea of ​​Azov.

And the most important thing is the people who live in all these territories. The results of the referendum showed that people want to be in Russia and consider themselves a part of this world, part of this space of our common culture, traditions and language. And this is the most important result, and now they are with us, and these are millions of people. It is most important.

As for criminal investigations. Yes, of course, you are right, but, as a matter of fact, we all understand the realities of the events taking place. And it is important to conduct an investigation, record these crimes, especially attacks on civilian and residential areas. Maybe you are right: maybe create some kind of general body that deals with this, and a state commission.

Let's think. I will also ask both the Prosecutor General's Office and the Investigative Committee to think about this topic, including thinking about how to call on those who want to do this to help - either as mentors or as those people who summarize the existing materials of law enforcement veterans. I will entrust this to the Prosecutor General's Office, we will definitely think about it. But, of course, it is necessary to fix this - it must be done professionally, I completely agree with you here.

Please.

E. Myslovsky:  Excuse me, a small addition. Can?

V. Putin:  Yes.

Yevgeny Myslovsky: The  thing is that today, behind every shelling there is a specific local Ukrainian commander. And many of them have already been killed, that is, punished, but for some reason they are silent about this. But there is intelligence, you just need to give it up and say: “Guys, investigators, why go into business about the murdered?” They were dealt with, they were punished - they are silent about this.

Vladimir Putin:  Okay, yes, I agree. You are right, I agree.

Those who shoot at residential areas are also not difficult to figure out, it's true. I marked for myself.

OK thank you very much. Thank you, Evgeny Nikolaevich.

Please, Valery Alexandrovich, go on.

Vladimir Fadeev:  The next speaker is Yan Vladimirovich Vlasov, co-chairman of the All-Russian Union of Public Associations of Patients, Doctor of Medicine. Yan Vladimirovich is a new member of the Council, and I am sure that he will strengthen the direction of work in terms of health and in terms of the right to health.

Jan Vladimirovich, please.

Yakov Vlasov:  Thank you very much.

Not so long ago, we did a study on one significant issue, namely, how the President's decrees regarding the state of medical personnel are being implemented in the part that captures the salaries of doctors.

Why did we come up with this question? Every year, every six months, in fact, we conduct a study among the patient community, what is the quality of medical care for the population. And the most important problem today is the lack of narrow specialists – doctors – in primary medical care. And the question is, why do we seem to have a large number of students graduating from institutes, a large number of young doctors graduating, why do we constantly have such gaps? After all, approximately 60 percent of patients say that they do not see a doctor of a narrow specialty in the primary care.

When we go to rural areas, we see that we do not have enough doctors in rural areas, that we have almost 60 percent of such doctors there, in rural medicine.

First, we turned to the doctors themselves with a question: what, in fact, prevents you from working in the healthcare system? And we saw several main themes. Especially for young people - within three years, 30 percent of young doctors leave the specialty, this is a lot.

What we saw. The first is low wages. In second place is a negative connotation within the medical community itself, negative mentoring, so to speak. And in third place is the problem with raising one's professional level.

You know, after we began to investigate this problem, we saw that the average salary of a doctor in the Russian Federation (we do not take Moscow and St. Petersburg) is approximately 52,000 rubles. This is a survey of doctors, more than one and a half thousand people in 60 regions. These are line doctors, that is, they are those who work directly with the patient, not the head doctors. Good. How much for a bet? And a doctor receives about 20,000 rubles for a position in one state institution. This is very little. And when we ask the question, how many wages do you need to get these 52,000 rubles, we see that more than 30 percent of doctors work for more than two wages, more than 30 percent. This naturally leads to professional burnout.

After a study with the state corporation Rosatom on the burnout of doctors in the FMBA and in some other [organizations], in small towns, we can say that more than 80 percent of doctors have professional burnout to one degree or another. Somewhere around 7 percent are people who irrevocably leave the healthcare system, and about 60 percent, sorry, is the average degree of this professional burnout. So we are losing these people.

The question is related to how to keep a doctor in the specialty, to protect him from external problems. Remember, at one time there were attacks on doctors, then Minister Veronika Igorevna Skvortsova said: “Let's equate them with the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” so that an attack on such a person in the line of duty would correspond to a certain criminal prosecution.

Now we are raising another question: let's equate them with the military, so that the doctor has a basic salary, a salary (not a salary, but a salary) - let it be four minimum wages, let it be six minimum wages, but these are the funds that the doctor could receive at any point in the Russian Federation on the basis of a common grid, and already from them to count some additional funds: experience, climatic difficulties, and so on. And this would probably be correct, because doctors are actually also a matter of the country's security.

At the moment, this, of course, is not the only problem for the doctor. The second problem is the question of how doctors are being educated now. That is, we turn to the main thing in a doctor - this is his education. Because a doctor who does not study is no longer a doctor. He must constantly improve his skills.

And most importantly: what do we have now a higher school, a professorial staff? I can tell you that the professorial staff today is no longer doctors, in fact, since they have been deprived of medical experience. That is, it turns out that a teacher of a higher educational medical institution, a professor - conditionally, maybe this is an academician - does not have medical experience.

The average salary of university professors is 30-35 thousand. Of course, they also leave the specialty. We are destroying our medical school, and we must do something about it too. In terms of the minimum wage, we propose to tie the teaching staff: six to eight minimum wages in higher education institutions. This is our proposal that we have been preparing. Here are the important points.

As for SVO. A large number of doctors who went to work in the NWO are now returning. These people, in my opinion, are heroic. Of course, we need to work with them now, they also need psychological help.

If we are talking directly about medical care in the SVO. First, we do not have enough specialists in the field of field medicine, not enough. It is necessary to raise field medicine. The Kirov Military Medical Academy knows better than anyone else how to do this.

Further. There are not enough dressing bags. That is, there is such a huge consumption of this, sorry for the tautology, consumables for dressings, that there is simply not enough of it. In fact, no medicines will be superfluous to these regions, they must be supplied. Moreover, if it is possible to give some kind of order from the regions ... After all, a huge amount of medicines, dressings are in the warehouses of pharmaceutical companies with an expiring - not expired, but an expiring period of use, that is, up to six months more. Please use. They go there with a bang. They need to be provided.

And, of course, it is necessary to train medical instructors in dressing work and first aid, because doctors take out, excuse me, one and a half meter tourniquets from the wound and do not understand why it does not heal - it is not processed correctly, this must be taught.

These are the questions. And it would be great, of course, if we could provide more active assistance on the ground, specifically by training our colleagues, including those in the republics.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  Thank you for the questions you raised. They are all of great importance, all, without any exaggeration.

I'll start with where you ended your speech - training personnel, especially for military field surgery and field medical activities.

Of course, the Ministry of Defense believes that, on the whole, this work has been done at the proper level. Nevertheless, I will draw the attention of the leadership of the Ministry, the Minister himself to the issues that you raised, and if something needs to be done additionally, I will certainly set it up and ensure that it is done. I will direct my colleagues from the Ministry of Defense to this work and ensure that this is done. This is the first.

Second. Regarding the use of consumables, including those that, as you said, may be in the warehouses of various organizations and companies, especially since they have not yet expired. Of course, it will be necessary to look into this, and I will definitely tell about this not only to the Minister of Defense, but also to the Minister of Health, and Tatyana Alekseevna Golikova. They have the whole site in front of their eyes, let's see what can be used there and how, we will definitely do it. Especially if something is missing.

Now about the system as a whole, improving the system of medical education. In my opinion, we have it quite serious, thorough. Probably, in modern conditions, in the modern world, everything needs constant attention and constant improvement, this goes without saying, because life is developing at a very fast pace, new opportunities, technological opportunities are emerging. We are constantly talking about this, and this is constantly in the field of view of the Ministry of Health.

If here, you think that something needs to be done additionally, additional steps should be taken, including the connection between the practice of medical activity and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge, then, of course, I will ask you to present your considerations in a concrete form. I promise you that I will issue this as an instruction to both the Ministry of Health and the Government as a whole, and my colleagues will certainly work it out.

Regarding the training, retraining of personnel, advanced training. The Ministry of Health has built a whole system of advanced training. I want to say again, if you, Yan Vladimirovich, see that something is not properly organized here, and you have specific suggestions on how to fix this, how to improve this work, I will be very grateful to you if you fill it out in as some kind of memo, in this case a memo - purely formally, but some kind of memo that could also be the basis of my instruction to the Government. We will definitely do this.

Yes, probably, there is a separation of some teachers from real life, from reality, from clinical practice. But I know a lot of examples when people teach and are engaged in practical activities themselves, they perform operations themselves. As you probably know, there are many such specialists among us. Honor them and praise and God bless them. In order for them to create their own schools and develop them, it is necessary, of course, to support them.

Now about what you actually started with - this is the level of wages.

Yes, I agree, especially in primary health care, where this system of payment definitely needs to be improved. And the Government has such a task - to develop common approaches to all territories of the Russian Federation, so that the basic principles of wages are properly structured there. Here I fully agree.

Yes, of course, in different regions of the Russian Federation, the cost of living is different, I mean that the cost of living is different, and the salaries are completely different, not only in healthcare, but also in other areas. This, of course, must be taken into account, but in general, of course, we must strive to ensure that the experiment that the Government has already begun to equalize the level of income in the healthcare system is not forgotten. This is for the future.

And now I cannot but agree with you, Yan Vladimirovich, that it is necessary now, without delay, to take some steps aimed at supporting the doctors. And in this regard, I instructed the Government to prepare relevant proposals.

I would like to inform you that we have agreed, and I supported these proposals by the Government – ​​of course, we need to start with primary health care. From January next year, I asked the Government to start additional payments to doctors working in this primary health care in the central district hospitals, in district hospitals and in the ambulance system. Additional payments - from 4.5 to 18.5 thousand rubles, depending, of course, on what the medical worker does, what position he holds, what functions he performs.

I asked the Government to organize work in such a way that these payments would start accruing directly from January 1 next year. If it takes some time to make bureaucratic decisions, then, probably, they will not have time to do this from January 1, today it is almost the middle of December, but all the same, in the first quarter, all technical issues need to be closed, and these additional payments should be calculated retrospectively, from January 1, 2023.

Please, let's continue.

Vladimir Fadeev:  The next speaker is Kirill Valerievich Vyshinsky, executive director of the Rossiya Segodnya international news agency.

Kirill Valerievich at one time experienced for himself what human rights are in Ukrainian (Vladimir Vladimirovich, remember for sure), he spent a year in a Ukrainian prison for his journalistic activities. Luckily, we managed to get him out of there.

Kirill Valerievich, please.

Konstantin Vyshinsky:  Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Good afternoon, colleagues!

Vladimir Vladimirovich, you spoke about the activities of international human rights organizations. On the whole, I agree with her, I can only add specific examples of how these people, these structures did not notice everything that was happening in Ukraine, not only this year, but throughout… At least I have been communicating with them since 2019, and I have a lot of examples, I do not want to take time, but take my word for it.

Perhaps the only organization that has now begun to pay attention to Ukraine and somehow react is the institutions associated with the UN, and, as people would say, they are doing it very “fucking”, reacting, among other things, to the first the turn for horrific war crimes that can no longer be overlooked. This is perhaps the only structure that somehow reacts to this.

But I want to talk about something else, about the fact that this year we are faced with something that has always been in principle, but, perhaps, has never been such a striking phenomenon or, at least, has not been frankly demonstrated. We did not even encounter a wave, but such a “ninth wave” of Russophobia, primarily in Europe.

I recently met with colleagues who, by virtue of their position in life, are coordinating and actively engaged in the development of the Immortal Regiment movement, including in European countries. And they talked more not about how to organize this procession by May 9, but about what our compatriots abroad are facing today. For example, I have a quote from a letter on the official letterhead of the mayor's office of the Polish city of Bialystok. Since the spring of this year, they have been throwing the organization of our compatriots out of the building in which, in accordance with the Polish Constitution, they have the right to create their own platform to support compatriots living in Poland. So the mayor's office of the city writes that they are expelling these people from the building only because they are Russians, but the city of Bialystok strongly objects to any activity, propagating the state (and here the second is very important) and the people who are the aggressor. That is, the very wording “the people who are the aggressor” – it doesn’t fit well in my head, but nevertheless, these people allow themselves such things.

In general, a lot of stories related to children in the first place. In Sweden, in one of the districts of Stockholm, after an active propaganda information campaign began, apparently related to the possible entry of Sweden into NATO, there was a massive information campaign that Russia was threatening, and in the class the teacher began to tell how to behave in case Russian threat. One of the girls from a Russian-speaking family left the class in tears because she was bullied by her classmates. She came home to her mother in tears and said: “What, we Russians, are we aggressors, all the people, right?”

In general, I repeat, there are a lot of such stories, and this suggests a simple thought: Russophobia, as we see it today in Europe, has, in fact, become a political technology for the fight against Russia and, in general, some kind of social mobilization of Europeans. And you know, this is very serious and strongly reminiscent of the technologies used by Nazi Germany, anti-Semitism, which was also called upon at one time to somehow rally the Germans in Nazi Germany.

On this occasion (this is not my assessment already, this is such a commonplace) even such black humor appeared, an anecdote about how two old men in Jerusalem leaf through today's European newspapers in the morning, look and say: “Well, that's it, we are no longer needed. Now the Russians are to blame for everything.” And this, unfortunately, is an unpleasant humor, but nevertheless a very sober assessment of what is happening.

And by and large, I would even return not only to anti-Semitism, I would also remember the genocide of the Soviet people, which we have recently begun to talk about, we are passing court decisions on this matter. Today's Russophobia... Yes, maybe this is a different phase, the initial one, but what is the big, fundamental difference between these two phenomena, because at one time the Nazis, when they actually practiced genocide on Soviet territory, started with the Bolsheviks, with the Communists, who were accused in all troubles, and then they stole and killed just Soviet people. They went beyond some political and class assessments and subjected the entire Soviet people to genocide.

Therefore, it seems to me that the time has passed only for some political assessments related to Russophobia. It seems to me, I have been talking about this for more than a year, that it is time to give some kind of legal assessment. I prepared about this… I am not a lawyer, although, you know, how they joke in prison, everyone who has been in prison is already a little familiar with the code and knows what some kind of legal formulations are.

Therefore, I believe that it would be worth making either additions to a certain article in the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, or even introducing an article on Russophobia, qualifying this phenomenon in the legal field, and determining the measure of responsibility.

It seems to look a little naive - well, who in Paris or Berlin will be afraid of our trial and our assessment? Nevertheless, there is a huge number of interstate agreements on legal assistance. And, you know, there have already been several cases when, after our courts ruled against citizens of the European Union ... For example, there was the famous “Vilnius case”, when several of our former servicemen were sentenced to serious prison terms for following an order in 1991 during the events in Vilnius. And when the Investigative Committee here gave the appropriate qualifications together with the court, and the judges who made a deliberately unjust decision were put on the international wanted list, these judges very quickly requested diplomatic passports from the Lithuanian Foreign Ministry, knowing full well

It seems to me that this is a demonstration that we are not completely powerless in the legal field, if we make efforts. It seems to me that these efforts are worth making. I will be happy to forward the specific wording to the [Presidential Administration] so that it may become the basis for the work of lawyers, because, I repeat once again, I am not a lawyer. But I would ask you to instruct the legal department and, since you have a legislative initiative, to submit it, perhaps, to the State Duma.

And one more thing I would like to say. You know, over the past few years, we have faced a huge number of criminal cases that are initiated in Ukraine against our citizens for their position - journalistic, public, legal. In Ukraine, the number of these cases grew like a snowball. I, at least, have the impression that this is, in fact, a violation of the rights of our citizens, pressure on them. It seems to me that we did not give a proper assessment of this practice in Ukraine, including a legal, legal one.

Although it would seem that now is not the time, nevertheless it seems to me that a legal assessment is never superfluous, since it is always a fact of legal reality. And we actually want, of course, to live within the law and understand that this also corresponds to international law.

Therefore, I would like to ask you to instruct the Investigative Committee to analyze this practice of Ukrainian law enforcement agencies and also give an appropriate legal assessment to the extent of their competence.

Thanks a lot.

Vladimir Putin:  Kirill Valerievich, if I may, I will use your speech to emphasize this once again. After all, the war was started - you know this much better than anyone else - not by us, but in 2014 after the coup d'état in Ukraine. It was started by the then Ukrainian authorities, who came into the corridors of this government with the help of this very coup d'état to suppress the will of the people living in the Donbass.

And then, in the same 2014, three foreign ministers - Poland, Germany and France - arrived in Kyiv and signed a document, a conciliatory document between the then acting authorities in Ukraine and the opposition, signed it as guarantors of a peaceful development of events. After all, when the coup d'état was carried out, after that these guarantors forgot that they were guarantors. And what should they do as guarantors? Return everything to the legal field and call on everyone to hold general elections and resolve this internal political crisis in a peaceful way. No, none of this has been done. Everyone seems to have forgotten about this document. When I now remind my colleagues, including in telephone conversations, about this, everyone is silent - there is nothing to answer.

After that, hostilities began in the Donbass with the use of heavy equipment, heavy weapons, and aviation. That's when, including in some European countries, in North America, moods not Russophobic, but other "phobic" moods could arise in relation to those who used force against civilians, the civilian population. Nothing of the sort happened. On the other hand, what happened all these years? The legitimate interests of the people who lived there, and the legitimate interests of Russia in protecting these people, were ignored, for all our demands, in response, we received only spit in the face. This is a hidden form of Russophobia. It has always been, unfortunately, in some circles in the West and among our neighbors - I mean the nationalist circles of the same Ukraine. She was always present, and in your programs you speak about it very vividly. I sometimes have time, by accident or otherwise, but sometimes I see your programs. They are very convincing and deep, for which I want to say a special thank you to you.

Strictly speaking, this is ignoring our interests, the interests of the people who live in these territories, this is Russophobia, they just turned everything upside down, they do not say that they have not fulfilled their obligations as guarantors of an agreement between the authorities and opposition in Ukraine in 2014, they don’t say that they trampled on these agreements, they don’t say that the Ukrainian authorities, who came to this power with the help of a coup d’état, started hostilities, they don’t talk about the killing of civilians in the Donbass - nothing do not speak. And only began this whole story from the moment of the special military operation. And it arose only because we were left no more chances to resolve this situation peacefully, and to continue this state in which all this was, it was just absolutely impossible. But this was used as a pretext for inciting these same anti-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments. There is nothing surprising here from the point of view of history. Russia has often encountered stories of this kind.

As for the authorities of some of our neighboring countries, Poland. You also know this as a former resident of Ukraine: there, the nationalist elements sleep and see [how] to return their so-called historical territories, that is, to take back the western territories that Ukraine received as a result of the decision of Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin after the Second World War. As you know, these territories were taken from Poland and given to Soviet Ukraine. Of course, the nationalist elements in Poland sleep and see [how] to return these territories to Poland, and they will strive for this, no matter what and whoever says it. We see this even from their literature, from their arguments and speeches. This is what they will eventually lead to, of this I have no doubt.

I have already said and I want to repeat: Russia could be the only real guarantor of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine within its current borders. Which contributed to the fact that Ukraine received these territories sometime after the Second World War - by Stalin's decision, of course. But this is the business of the Ukrainian politicians themselves - of the future, of course, the current politicians, in my opinion, understand little about this and do not think about it. Although some, it seems to us, are already beginning to think. Any more active involvement of their Western ally and neighbor today in Ukrainian affairs will ultimately be aimed at tearing away Ukrainian territories, the western part of Ukraine. It would be nice if they thought about it and understood what is happening. Well, God bless them, this is their business, I repeat.

Regarding your proposal, I agree with it. Let's work it out, and thank you for framing it this way.

And here are the individual elements of this Russophobia, including the impact on children and so on - what is surprising here if we know that in some Western countries animals in the zoo are killed, butchered and so on in front of children. This absolutely does not correspond to our culture, the culture of the peoples of the Russian Federation, not only the Russian people, but all other peoples. And there it happens. They use very harsh measures to influence the public consciousness. God be their judge, but I think that in the end it will turn against them.

Let's go further. Please.

Valery Aleksandrovich, who is next?

Vladimir Fadeev:  The next speaker is Svetlana Makovetskaya, director of the GRANI Center for Civil Analysis and Independent Research Foundation.

Svetlana Gennadievna is perhaps the best specialist and expert in how Russian civil society institutions function, including in legal aspects.

Svetlana Gennadievna, please.

Svetlana Makovetskaya:  Thank you very much.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Dear colleagues!

Non-profit organizations, including charitable organizations, volunteer associations continue to help Russian citizens within walking distance, in the face of various weaknesses, sanctions pressure, and crisis phenomena that arise. But at the same time, the organizations themselves live their own lives, and I would like to draw attention to the need to solve the problems of organizational building of these same non-profit organizations.

The increasingly complex legal environment for non-profit organizations is clear, but there are barriers that arise due to contradictions related to the basic legislation on non-profit activities and the Civil Code. The main discrepancies arise due to the fact that the Civil Code regulates the activities of non-profit organizations, which continues to operate the basic Federal Law of December 1996 "On Non-Profit Organizations", and, in fact, the non-profit practice itself.

Until now, unfortunately, the provisions of the Law on NPOs, which relate to the creation of non-profit organizations, the process of adopting constituent documents, the liquidation of NPOs and the activities of the supreme body of NPOs, have not been brought into line with the Civil Code of the Russian Federation.

We know that the Civil Code offers a unified approach that is quite rigid, a rigid concept of a legal entity for a non-profit organization, and the basic law “On Non-Profit Organizations” could make this approach more flexible, make it more understandable, transparent and convenient for non-profit organizations to use. .

However, this does not happen, and as a result, a large number of contradictions arise, and two families of regulatory legal acts develop independently: some amendments to the Civil Code, and other amendments to the law “On Non-Commercial Organizations and Public Associations”, giving rise to a wide variety of practices for regulating activities non-profit organizations.

In some cases, it is difficult even to simply register a non-profit organization, because the Civil Code of the Russian Federation and the drafters of the law on non-profit organizations did not correlate the requirements. For example, Article 65 of the Civil Code considers the meeting of participants to be the supreme body of a corporation, which includes public associations. And articles 66 and 8 of our basic law on public associations consider that no members of public organizations take part in management, and members of the organization should be in charge of management. Thus, the creators of the statutory documents of NGOs still act in consultations with the justice authorities at their own peril and risk, choosing one or another approach.

In addition, another problem with our basic federal law is that it includes articles both on non-state non-profit organizations and on state corporations and budgetary institutions with state and municipal participation. And as a result, the legislator is forced to make special changes to the regulations, clarifying whether certain, for example, support measures apply to non-governmental non-profit organizations or whether they apply to state non-profit organizations.

Special regulation of the activities of state NGOs, as a rule, is now being moved to a specialized law, for example, to the Federal Law “On the Education of the Russian Federation”. This, from our point of view, makes it practically inexpedient to retain general provisions, regulation of state and non-state NPOs in the law on NPOs.

It makes sense to separate non-governmental non-profit organizations and commercial organizations with state participation and, finally, decide on a uniform approach and adopt a new draft law regarding the basic law on the activities of non-profit organizations, while the activities of state non-profit organizations can be regulated by transitional provisions until the adoption of the relevant federal law.

Another little hitch is that it is necessary to remove the barrier for NPOs to manage a non-profit organization, caused by the archaic norms on the founders of a non-profit organization. The founders of an NPO and the founders of a commercial structure are completely different practices. In fact, the founder of a non-profit organization creates it and then has the right not to take part in its activities, forgets about it, and so on. Quite often, long-lived non-profit organizations have founders who have lost contact with it, died, left, can be liquidated if it is a legal entity, but the fact of their non-participation in the activities of the organization is completely not taken into account in the requirements for NPO decisions.

In some cases, for example, autonomous non-profit organizations cannot independently generate changes to documents, since this is related to the requirements for the powers of the founders, and any connection with them may be lost. In some cases, additional restrictions arise when it is necessary to liquidate a non-profit organization and it is necessary to make a decision on liquidation, which is possible either by an authorized body in a court decision, or by decision of the founder.

We are again faced with the problem when the founder does not participate in the activities of the organization, communication with him is lost, no one can make a decision on his exclusion due to death - absence of life - from the NPO, and, thus, the NPO cannot use the founders' decision mechanism to liquidation, and, accordingly, society is forced to spend the resources of state authorities on the liquidation of NPOs in court.

It seems to us that it is long overdue to admit the possibility of expulsion from the list of founders of an NPO at the initiative of the governing bodies of the non-profit organization itself.

In this regard, we have a request, Vladimir Vladimirovich. We ask you to instruct the Government of the Russian Federation, with the participation of the Human Rights Council under the President of the Russian Federation and the involvement of expert organizations in the field of NPO practice, to decide on a unified approach to the further development of legislation on the non-profit sector, the development of draft laws that will include regulation of the activities of all non-governmental commercial organizations, to eliminate contradictions in the legislation of NGOs, taking into account the preservation of a unified approach to the regulation of activities, for example, on the basis of the civil code. At the same time, it is necessary to take into account the flexibility and adequacy of the current practice of regulating the activities of individual organizational and legal forms, which can be considered through a number of independent legislative acts.

Also in connection with what I said about the founders: [please give] an instruction to the Government of the Russian Federation on amending the laws governing the activities of NGOs and public associations, which allow exclusion from the founders of persons who have died who have lost contact with the organization at the initiative of the organization itself .

Excuse me, Valery Alexandrovich, excuse me, Vladimir Vladimirovich. I have a very small last piece that I did not warn about. But I cannot but mention the problem that, I think, worries a significant number of people in our country, is that the threat of a world nuclear war now seems real. The prevention of such a threat, it seems to me, is overvalued.

It seems to me that your personal statement, Vladimir Vladimirovich, that Russia would not under any circumstances be the first to use nuclear weapons could become a true gesture of goodwill. And, perhaps, a clarification in connection with this of the Fundamentals of State Policy on Nuclear Deterrence.

Sorry if my last section is off-topic, but it is absolutely impossible to remain silent about what there are so many fears about.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  I understand.

About the threat of nuclear war. Svetlana Gennadievna, you are right, such a threat is growing, that it is a sin to hide here.

Regarding the fact that Russia under no circumstances will apply the first. But if he does not use the first one under any circumstances, then the second one will not be used either, because the possibilities of using it in the event of a nuclear strike on our territory are very limited.

Nevertheless, our strategy for the use of means of defense, namely, as a defense, we consider weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons, it is all tuned around the so-called retaliatory strike, that is, when we are struck, we strike back.

There is also what everyone is now discussing, the so-called tactical nuclear weapons. It, American nuclear weapons, is located in large numbers on European territory. We have not, and are not, transferring our nuclear weapons to anyone, but, of course, we will protect our allies with all the means at our disposal, if necessary.

But what's the point here? The fact is that, just as in the previous case, when they talked about Russophobia, no one notices and does not want to notice and see what is being done and said in neighboring countries, in Western countries. I have already said: we do not maintain our own nuclear weapons, including tactical ones, on the territory of other countries, we do not have them, but the Americans have them both in Turkey and in a number of other European states. They are training on the possibility of using the carriers of these countries for the use of American nuclear weapons. We haven't done any of this yet. This is the second.

Third. Did we talk about the possibility of application? No. Here's the former Prime Minister of Great Britain, don't forget tonight, she said publicly that she was ready to do it. In response to this, I had to emphasize some things too. Immediately, no one noticed her statement, and what we say immediately sticks out, and with these statements the whole world begins to frighten.

Therefore, we have not gone mad, we are fully aware of what nuclear weapons are. We have these means, and they are in a more advanced and more modern form than any other nuclear country. This is obvious, today it is an obvious fact. But we're not going to run around the world brandishing this weapon like a razor. But, of course, we proceed from the fact that it is. This is a natural deterrent, not provoking to the expansion of conflicts, but a deterrent. And I hope everyone understands this.

Now, regarding your proposals regarding the improvement of the regulatory framework and the legal framework for the activities of non-profit organizations.

First, I want to say that in general the activities of non-profit organizations are extremely important for our country. Because, and I have said this many times, I say this with absolute sincerity, where officials - even good-looking, even well-trained and sincere people in bureaucratic apparatuses - try to achieve the maximum result of their work, after all, non-profit organizations often turn out to be more effective. , meaning that they do not work for money - first of all, they work according to the call of the heart. And such a motivation to help people, to achieve results in extremely important, sensitive social areas is extremely important for the final result.

Therefore, we are interested in creating an effective legal framework. And I will certainly entrust all your proposals - as I understand that you have prepared them - to the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice, probably, should first of all work together with the Main Legal Department of the Presidential Administration. I will certainly give such an instruction, and then I will ask you to give Valery Alexandrovich your developments and proposals. And of course, you are right: if this is done, then it should be done jointly with the Government and the Human Rights Council, with experts like you.

Thank you.

Valery Alexandrovich, please.

Vladimir Fadeev:  Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich. We have a very business-like, working interaction with the Ministry of Justice. We will prepare the documents in the near future.

The next speaker is Kirill Viktorovich Kabanov, chairman of the public organization National Anti-Corruption Committee.

Kirill Viktorovich, please.

Kirill Kabanov:  Thank you.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Dear colleagues!

Exactly two years ago, we discussed the need to create a concept for the protection of human rights in the digital space of the Russian Federation. On the basis of your instructions, Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Human Rights Council, together with the Government, has prepared this document, and a decree is being prepared now.

But in the course of studying the problem, it became clear that for the development of the digital space - and, by the way, artificial intelligence technologies, which were recently discussed - and most sectors of the economy, it is necessary to work with personal data. Some players in this industry are trying to prove that personal data is a commodity that is the property of the business, which they somehow obtained, it is not clear how. But in essence this is not so. First of all, we speak from the position of security, human rights and freedoms of citizens.

There are already a lot of negative examples, I mean just this year. In 2022, cases of leakage of personal data of clients of various digital platforms caused a great public outcry. So, for example, the information of the Yandex.Food [service] was leaked. It seems to be nothing terrible - the supply of food. But the base of several million clients of the Gemotest clinic immediately leaks. On the example of Gemotest, we see that the results of citizens' tests - medical tests, blood tests and other tests that constitute a medical secret - become publicly available, fall into the general network. Such a leak can lead to very specific negative consequences, but liability, fines for such leaks amount to 60 thousand rubles. 60 thousand rubles for several million leaks. In fact, this does not correspond to the gravity of the deed,

From recent examples. The personal data of 36 [thousand] buyers of online stores of military goods have been made publicly available. Some of them are specifically mobilized and members of their families. This is data with their phones, with cards, last names, first names, patronymics. We are well aware that in today's situation, personal data is of interest not only for business, but, first of all, it is of interest to the intelligence services of unfriendly states.

In this regard, it seems appropriate to establish higher turnover penalties, primarily for companies that have leaked personal data. This will ensure the protection of personal data and will encourage businesses to increase security.

But turnover fines alone will not solve the problem. It is necessary to introduce criminal liability for the illegal circulation of personal data. Since in most cases we are not just talking about random leaks - this is either theft, theft, or some kind of deliberate theft within the company.

When we talk about personal data, we keep talking about fraud, theft of money. By the way, you know very well, you said about it, that this theft comes from the territories of states hostile to us: they steal from pensioners, they steal from vulnerable people.

We believe that there should be a mechanism for the return of funds, because the state, to be honest, including law enforcement officers, responds inefficiently and inefficiently to such threats and such acts.

In conclusion, there is a very important aspect. My colleagues and I believe that before developing any project related to artificial intelligence technologies, the development of a digital system, it is necessary to study and map the possible risks of personal data theft and take steps to protect them. If such risks really exist and their probability is high, such a project should not be released. By the way, we have seen such projects that are now connected with personal data, specifically related to people.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I have a request regarding the instructions. It is necessary to instruct the Ministry of Digital Development and the Ministry of Internal Affairs to submit proposals for amending the legislation - the establishment of turnover fines, primarily their significant increase for business entities, and most importantly - to discuss the possibility of criminal liability for the illegal circulation of stolen personal data. This responsibility must be introduced, this is a completely new concept, but we are doing it by analogy with drug trafficking, we are introducing the concept of “illegal trafficking in personal data”.

Second. An instruction to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation to work out the possibility - they have already begun to discuss this with us, with our colleagues - on a mechanism for compensation by credit institutions, banks of funds stolen from their clients as a result of fraudulent activities. Because 90 percent of fraudulent activities are the leakage of personal data on their part.

Thank you, I'm done, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Vladimir Putin: This is  a very important question, no doubt you have heard it, I always talk about it when we discuss the development of modern technologies, artificial intelligence and so on, because many of these technologies cannot be applied, they cannot be used without this very data. , including personal ones. The question, of course, is the protection of this personal data. This, of course, is one of the key issues of progress on this most important track for the development of the economy and the social sphere.

But for now, I agree with you, Kirill, this is absolutely not regulated, it needs additional regulation. And, probably, there is a need for tougher liability for offenses in this area.

With regard to turnover fines and criminal liability. I understand that you are talking about criminal liability for illegal trafficking. After all, those who use this data should know and understand that they are using stolen data - that's right, because even the property that is stolen, if it is a bona fide purchaser, a bona fide buyer of this or that property, he does not know that that it is a stolen item. By analogy, the same is here.

Of course, this needs to be worked out properly. But in general, you are absolutely right, I agree with you, we definitely need to think about this and take timely informed decisions that will protect the interests of citizens and will not be an obstacle to the development of relevant information technologies that are very necessary for the state.

Turnover penalties and generally something like that - certainly need to think about it. Turnover fines – You didn't mention this by chance, because for certain companies turnover fines can be simply enormous, and this is, of course, a serious thing. But, of course, I would like to emphasize once again that you are right that appropriate decisions must be worked out and adopted to protect the interests of citizens.

As for the return of funds lost by citizens as a result of fraudulent activities using the latest technologies. There are certain difficulties here, which lie in the fact that sometimes these funds are stolen - and they are stolen or lured from people outwardly by such methods and means, including with the help of modern social technologies, that it seems like a person himself, voluntarily gave or something even signed. And here, of course, there is a very thin line of responsibility for what is happening. But no matter how subtle it is, it still exists, and in any case, these are fraudulent actions that harm a citizen, a violation of his rights.

You and I know that today most banks most often, in most cases of this kind, reimburse citizens for lost funds. But you are also right that some kind of system should be developed, some kind of general approach to resolving issues of this kind. Today, most financial organizations even take into account in their expenses the approximate funds that go to reimburse the lost funds to citizens. But we need to think about it and systematize it, so I agree with you. Both the Ministry of Digital Development, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and the Central Bank will be given appropriate recommendations and instructions. Thank you.

Please. With us, as I understand it, the list of those who would like to speak has been completed for a long time, who would like to say something else or make an offer?

Vladimir Fadeev:  Vladimir Vladimirovich, we have four scheduled performances, we are already working at two o'clock. Here are four, if you will. And I will ask my colleagues to be as short as possible.

Vladimir Putin:  Please.

Vladimir Fadeev:  Eva Mikhailovna Merkacheva, columnist for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper.

Yekaterina Merkacheva:  Good afternoon!

I will talk about humanism and mercy within our country, I will call for this. I want to tell you about the pre-trial detention center, pre-trial detention centers, where people, let me remind you, are until the verdict. We now have a huge number of people there - about 120 thousand people. When I monitored the pre-trial detention center this year, I saw many who sleep on the floor or take turns sleeping, because the pre-trial detention centers are overcrowded.

We have a lot of women in Russian pre-trial detention centers who have young children at home. The vast majority of these prisoners are suspected of non-violent crimes and do not pose any threat to society. They sit until the verdict only because it is so convenient for the investigation, because this is a method of pressure, better than which, to date, law enforcement officers have not come up with anything.

This year, I found quite a few women in the pre-trial detention center who spent three, four, even five years there. I talked about this on the Legal Forum. Thanks to Tatyana Nikolaevna Moskalkova, at her request I provided a list of women who have been in prison for five years before the verdict comes into force. Think five years. During this time, you can do anything: open a business, get a higher education, raise a child. They are imprisoned, yet, I repeat, not found guilty.

This is despite the fact that the conditions in the pre-trial detention center are equated to a strict regime, and a strict regime is not provided for by Russian law for women as a punishment. That is, those who have not yet been found guilty are sitting in conditions in which they cannot be, even when they are given a real sentence.

This is a legal issue. Even some senators paid attention to it this year, but so far nothing has been done. Nevertheless, I remind you that the number of women who are held in pre-trial detention centers and accused of non-violent crimes is only increasing.

The worst thing here is that children suffer. Children are definitely not to blame. When I walked around the cells of the women's pre-trial detention center, I asked women who have small children at home - a huge number to raise their hands.

Let me give you a few examples to illustrate this.

For example, a woman has been in jail for four years already, she is the former owner of a travel agency, an economic crime. The child still thinks that his mother is being treated somewhere in a distant country, that therefore she can neither call him nor see him. Sitting for four years.

Or another woman, she has three children, and the children think that their mother flew to explore space, some new planets. Let me remind you that now meetings and calls are allowed only if the investigator gives the go-ahead. At one time, I said that we had prepared a bill that would take this right out of the jurisdiction of the investigator - to give calls to children, but, unfortunately, our bill was blocked by the security forces, and still parents cannot contact their children.

I don’t know, I can probably tell some more story so that you understand the whole horror of the situation in general. I recently met a woman, she is a teacher at one of the military universities, a professor, she has five children. One of the children is autistic, the youngest child is five years old. Here, I repeat, she was thrown into a pre-trial detention center for an economic crime. She was immediately told that her husband would be put in jail, the husband was a lawyer, and her husband was put in jail. The children were left without both parents.

In general, this is such a trend when both mom and dad are now imprisoned at once, so that they are afraid and immediately give confessions. In the case of this woman, it was surprising that she later told us how she was taken to investigative actions in Moscow in shackles. To be honest, at first I did not believe it, and then we had more appeals. This is a whole new story. This year they began to use the so-called “Azhur” means, the Ministry of Internal Affairs purchased about 20 thousand of such means, special means - this is a restriction of mobility. And there is already a recommendation from the convoy regiment to use them.

I would very much ask you to ban the use of such means in our country against women, entrepreneurs, in general, all people who are accused of non-violent crimes. It's understandable, maybe if it's a terrorist, if it's a rapist, a maniac, then you can put this tool on him, these shackles, but it's just some kind of Middle Ages. I repeat, this did not happen before, this is something new, it is not clear how to explain such strange behavior.

I would also like to say, since the subject of the SIZO was touched upon, that this year we have a real disaster - a record number of deaths of prisoners from diseases. Some prisoners, for example, were dying before my eyes.

I will tell the story of a guy, he is 25 years old, he was accused of petty fraud. We came to see him in the cell, he was already lying, he was motionless, but the court and the investigation considered that he could be kept in custody. He died. Again, economic crime.

It was scary when a Novosibirsk scientist died almost in front of the whole country. True, he was accused of treason, this is a terrible crime, but nonetheless. He was taken out of Novosibirsk, disconnected from all life support devices, brought to Lefortovo, and he died a day later. The last stage of cancer, the man suffered, it's even hard to imagine how he was taken.

In general, we have a huge number of people who are still alive, but who are disabled - they are blind, legless, and I would like to ask first of all for them. Again, if we are talking about these sick people and about women, we are primarily talking about those who are accused of non-violent crimes, that is, this is the economy, these are some others, but these are exactly the people who, having remained at large, will not rob and kill. We have house arrest, we have bail, and finally, we have a written undertaking not to leave.

Still, of course, I would like you to voice your position on the return of the death penalty. Now we very often hear from various statesmen that it would be good to return it. You have said many times that you are against the death penalty, I would like to understand whether your position has changed or not.

One last thing. Separately, I would like to pass on to you later a report on the situation with convicts who are in colonies and SVO.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  With regard to the death penalty. Quite recently, speaking at the Congress of Judges, the Chairman of the Constitutional Court Valery Dmitrievich Zorkin spoke about this. He said, in response to requests from those who advocate the return of the death penalty, that for this we would simply have to change the Constitution. Therefore, my position has not changed in this sense. First.

The second is about where you started: women with children and everything connected with it, with arrests and so on. Eva Mikhailovna, you later switched to other categories, and this is very correct. Why? Because as soon as you said about women with children, but I also feel sorry for the women, to be honest, who are sitting behind bars there, all the more so for the children who were left without a mother, this is an obvious thing. But of course we have other categories as well. Just women without children, are they any worse? Or the same invalids? Questions of social justice also arise, and here we need some kind of uniform attitude towards all these categories of citizens. First.

The second, which is quite obvious, is unacceptable: if a person sits behind bars in a pre-trial detention cell for five years before trial, then this, of course, is a clear violation of human rights. We have already talked about this many times, and I have repeatedly told the leadership of the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and other law enforcement special services that this practice should be stopped.

It is necessary to determine the timing of the investigation in any criminal cases, they should not always conduct criminal cases, referring to insurmountable objective difficulties. And if at a certain time allotted for the investigation, it is not possible to complete a criminal case - there are very difficult cases, it's true - then in this case it is necessary either to stop, or, in any case, you need to release, not go to other measures of restraint.

There are many situations in life. Unfortunately, even women with children are used by drug dealers, for example, to stock drugs and so on. Lots of real life situations. Therefore, we must strive to avoid extremes, and to ensure that our judicial system, law enforcement as a whole, is fair. We must strive for this.

I will definitely give the relevant instructions to both the Prosecutor General's Office and the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and I will ask the Supreme Court to also analyze this kind of practice.

As for the fact that someone is taken to interrogations in shackles, especially for economic crimes, I don’t even know how to qualify this. But I promise you that attention will not just be drawn to this, but we will ensure that this practice is, of course, stopped.

Please complete your proposals and submit them. We will definitely work on this. As I already said, I will ask the Prosecutor General's Office, the Supreme Court to work through all these issues, and the Investigative Committee.

Please, who else, please.

Vladimir Fadeev:  The next speaker is Olga Yuryevna Demicheva, President of the International Charitable Public Organization Doctor Lisa's Fair Help.

Olga Yurievna, please.

Olga Demicheva:  Yes, thank you.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, let me return to the topic of Donbass. I would now like to talk about the development of health care in the Donbass.

First of all, I fulfill the instructions of the doctors of the Republican Traumatological Center of Donetsk. Three days ago I returned from the Donbass, and they recently asked me if I would see the President. I’m seeing you now, and they asked you to tell you that they are working, that they will work, that they consider themselves citizens of Russia since 2014, and they don’t ask for anything: neither for an increase in wages, nor for easier working conditions - they work more than two points. They work without water – there is no water at all in Donetsk, Vladimir Vladimirovich. They work with power outages, often in cold rooms and, of course, under constant shelling. Of course, the word "naturally" does not fit here, but this is a daily situation that occurs in the city of Donetsk. People go to work in the morning and do not know if they will return home alive.

In addition, those people who have been on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics since 2014, who made their choice and who stayed there to live and work, are special people, this is a special value of Russia. And for these people, the most worthy conditions should be created in terms of the possibility of obtaining medical care. Now the situation is as follows.

Due to the fact that we are in a transitional period, the provision of planned medical care, the one that is provided under compulsory medical insurance, is difficult for citizens of these territories. It is possible to get it, but it is a very cumbersome way, long, complicated, and more often people find it easier to turn to charitable organizations in order to get this help for a fee. We don't refuse. Charitable organizations are trying to do everything for this, but there are many such people. NGOs cannot close everything, the system must work.

Another point is the provision of assistance in terms of the prevention of socially significant infections. Prior to the start of the special military operation, the humanitarian missions of the World Health Organization, which entered the territory of the DPR and LPR, provided these republics with diagnostic tests, preventive measures, drugs for the treatment of tuberculosis, HIV, hepatitis C, and so on. Not out of great love, I think, but because they don’t need to spread the infection either. Now they have left, and I talked with the chief doctors of the respective clinics, these funds are not enough now, we need to close this gap.

Further. When we, doctors, come to the territory of Donbass to provide assistance to our colleagues, there should not be a one-sided process. The fact is that for almost nine years on the territory of Donbass, tremendous experience has been accumulated in the treatment of mine-explosive injuries. And our traumatologists are not able to do this today the way they can do it in the Donbass. Therefore, it is necessary to create those training teams that would work with our doctors, with our surgeons and traumatologists. Donbas doctors should share their experience with us on these issues.

Further. There are some areas of medical care (and these are also features of wartime) that are simply absent in the Donbass. In particular, it is palliative care. It is practically not represented in the Donetsk Republic and is not represented at all in the Lugansk Republic. There are no hospices, there are no real palliative departments, there are single beds. Work is also needed in this direction.

And finally, it is very important that non-profit organizations that are now helping Donbass - and we are quick response organizations, as they say, turn to us - we respond immediately - do not interfere in terms of purchasing medical consumables, necessary equipment for clinics, and so on.

While the transition period is going on, while requests for providing clinics are being satisfied, time passes, and people need to be treated now.

That's all I wanted to say. Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  First of all, thank you for continuing the work begun by Dr. Glinka. But the questions, of course, do not become less relevant, and perhaps even more acute, compared to the period when your predecessor was heroically engaged in this work.

As for the doctors of Donbass. Yes, of course, they have a great, serious experience in the treatment of certain patients, especially with mine-explosive injuries and so on, and this should be used. But at the same time, it is clear that they need retraining, gaining additional knowledge, gaining experience with modern equipment that should be supplied there.

Of course, for the most part, doctors, especially those who work in such difficult conditions, are people of a special disposition, a special character, a special noble motivation. They do not ask for anything, but, of course, they must enter our legal field in the near future, in the field of social protection, wage levels, and so on.

All this, of course, must be done, and we have repeatedly said this. I have repeatedly spoken to both the Minister of Health and Tatiana Alekseyevna Golikova, who, as Deputy Prime Minister, oversees this area. And the corresponding plans for working with colleagues in the new territories are now being drafted and will be implemented. And now the work is already underway, as you know.

Unfortunately, one of their Russian counterparts has just died in one of these territories. Unfortunately, this happened - however, as a result of an accident, this is a tragic accident, a tragic case, where the driver lost control on a slippery road. But she was there for a reason, not on a tourist trip. She helped local doctors in providing medical care, primarily to children, it was about examining children. Worked there for quite some time.

So this work is underway, it should acquire a systemic character. And here you are absolutely right, thank you for drawing attention to this, and especially for saying that drugs are needed to treat socially significant diseases, meaning HIV, tuberculosis, and so on, which used to come from various organizations . Yes, many of them seem to have gone, and this niche should be filled as quickly as possible if it really has arisen. Judging by what you say, this niche exists. And, of course, we will deal with it now, we will definitely deal with it.

As for the conditions in which people live and work, this is also an answer to the topic that we have just discussed with your colleagues. You said about the lack of water in the proper quantity and quality. These are water supply facilities that are controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which prevent the flow of this water to the millionth city. It's genocide, it's just a continuation of genocide. Nobody pays attention to it, nobody. And this is another confirmation that we are doing everything right. We simply have no choice to act differently.

But when conducting a special military operation, of course, we must resolve current issues, and, above all, social issues, and support medical workers in all the areas that I have mentioned, including in this case. We will definitely do it.

Thank you very much for the attention you paid to these issues, and in general for your work in continuation of what your heroic predecessor did, I want to emphasize this again.

Thanks a lot.

Please, is there anything else?

Alexei Fadeev:  Shota Olegovich Gorgadze, managing partner of the Gorgadze and Partners law firm.

Shota Olegovich, please.

Vladimir Putin:  Please.

Sh. Gorgadze:  Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Dear colleagues!

I want to touch on a topic that concerns quite a few, maybe a small number of people, but extremely vulnerable. These are people who are recognized by the court as either limited or deprived of legal capacity.

The current legislation allows them to subsequently apply to the court for the restoration of their legal capacity. But until they are restored to legal capacity by the court, they do not have the right to conclude transactions. Accordingly, they cannot sign an agreement with a lawyer so that he accepts the assignment and represents the interests of the incapacitated person in court. Therefore, this process becomes extremely difficult for them.

We held certain consultations with the Ministry of Labor of the Russian Federation, and with the [Moscow Research] Institute [of Psychiatry] Serbsky, and with the Federal Chamber of Lawyers of the Russian Federation. They all support the initiative that I now want to voice, Vladimir Vladimirovich, is the need for the participation of a lawyer in this category of cases, including by appointment, and not by the will of the applicant directly. That is, when a person submits an application for the restoration of legal capacity, then his interests must be represented by a lawyer, including, possibly, payment for this lawyer must be made at the expense of the budget.

In my opinion, if you make a recommendation to the State Duma to introduce amendments to the civil procedural legislation that provide for the mandatory participation of a lawyer in such cases, this will greatly facilitate the life of people who, due to certain illnesses, have been limited or deprived of legal capacity.

I also cannot but say, dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, on a topic that worries any sane citizen of our country, and, it seems to me, this applies not only to our fellow citizens. This, in addition to that rabid Russophobia, which many colleagues have already spoken about today, and you also noted, is a ban on Russian culture, dear colleagues.

This same punishment themselves, is obtained. Okay, they hate everything Russian and are trying to turn the image of a Russian into an image of an enemy. But to deprive oneself of that centuries-old culture with which Russian literature has enriched world literature? Music, art. I know that in some countries they tried to ban Dostoevsky. Recently there was a scandal at La Scala when they tried to open the season with Mussorgsky's opera. The Ambassador of Ukraine to Italy wrote a letter about the inadmissibility of opening the opera season in Italy with an opera by a Russian composer.

Why am I just talking about this? It seems to me that yes, of course, we must protect our compatriots abroad, but we must also pay attention - I don’t quite understand how, though - to protecting the culture that has become part of world culture, which now some, in my opinion, rather stupid people are simply trying to withdraw from the world treasury.

This, of course, is utter nonsense that is happening, but somehow we must protect it for the sake of future generations. Thank you.

V. Putin:  Yes.

Shota Olegovich, first, regarding the restoration of the legal capacity of those of our citizens who were once recognized as incompetent. Of course, I will instruct the Ministry of Labor and other relevant departments to think it over, think it over and propose solutions.

It's not about the money. The budget money is probably small - how many such appeals there will be. This is the mandatory participation of a lawyer on behalf of the state and at the expense of the state, this practice is widely used, and lawyers receive appropriate money for this, however, from the state, but they are obliged to protect the interests of the client on behalf of the state. It can all be done.

Here you only need to think through all the details that are connected with this: this would not lead to a restriction of opportunities for those people who need legal protection. What do I mean? That if some decisions are made in this sense, including at the level of the law, then it is impossible to limit the ability of people, say, to turn to such lawyers, whose services they themselves would like to use, including lawyers from the same human rights organizations. or non-governmental organizations, specialized organizations. This topic needs to be thought about. This is the first.

And the second, regarding the part of your question concerning Russian, Russian culture. We say “Russian culture”, but is Rasul Gamzatov a representative of Russian culture or not at all? And the same Gogol is a Russian writer or Ukrainian?

Of course it's stupid. As our well-known musician said, they are simply fools, those who introduce such restrictions, they are depriving themselves of a part of world culture.

To be honest, I don't even know if we need to somehow counteract this. Why? Because those who do this are clearly the enemies of our country, they cause damage to themselves by their actions, and is it necessary to prevent this damage that they cause to themselves? The logic is kind of sophisticated, but it seems to me that this is still logic that has the right to exist. Let's think. But sane people, including those in foreign countries, of course, understand the nonsense of what the ruling circles in some countries are doing.

Turkish President Erdogan also drew attention to this, he remembered that only the Nazis in the 30s of the last century burned books of classics in the squares, and compared these actions of the Nazis with what is happening in some countries with respect to Russian culture today. And this is the correct comparison. When people from the outside, and even more so politicians of this level, pay attention to what is happening, it even seems to me much more effective than we will somehow always point the finger at this nonsense that flourishes in some countries .

And what is happening is, of course, amazing. It's amazing, it's true. They harm themselves. Let us keep in mind those with whom and with whom we are dealing. This means that our assessments of their moral qualities are correct. And this confirms the correctness of what we are doing, in fact.

Please.

Vladimir Fadeev: Mr  Putin, if you will, one more speech, it is important for us. By your recent Decree, you appointed a representative of the new territories to the Council: Elena Nikolaevna Shishkina, a member of the presidium of the Free Donbass social movement.

Please, Elena Nikolaevna.

Yekaterina Shishkina:  Good afternoon, Vladimir Vladimirovich!

Colleagues!

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I convey to you the respect of the inhabitants of the new regions of the Russian Federation for the opportunity to return home. We have been moving towards this for many, many years, and finally, this year it happened. For us, this is a holiday, so far with tears in our eyes, unfortunately.

As for the support of the NWO regions. Nothing needs to be discussed here: our men have been defending Russian territories with weapons in their hands since 2014, women in the rear have been forging victory, and in general, because of the daily shelling of the regions, we are losing civilians every day, we are losing children, we are losing old people. Every inhabitant of Donbass is now a hero. The same heroine was Maria Pirogova. I am grateful to you for noting her contribution to the development of the Russian Federation with a state award.

There is such a systemic issue, Vladimir Vladimirovich. On April 7, 2014, the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics were proclaimed, but for the so-called world community, de jure, we remained the territories of the state of Ukraine.

During the period from April 2014 to September 30, 2022, when we became part of the Russian Federation, residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, new territories were prosecuted by Ukraine for especially serious crimes. These are doctors, teachers, civil servants who did not accept the coup d'etat in 2014, did not agree with the ruling Nazi regime. And these people were convicted, and the sentences came into force in the name of Ukraine for such crimes as high treason, espionage, financing of terrorism, these are very, very serious articles. After reunification with Russia, after returning home, information from the databases of law enforcement officers of Ukraine is now listed in the databases of the law enforcement system of the Russian Federation.

Thus, it turns out that today thousands of Russian citizens, residents of new regions, have a criminal record for especially serious crimes, which violates their rights guaranteed by the Constitution. They cannot be engaged in entrepreneurial activities, be guardians, be elected, be civil servants, and so on.

We cannot apply to the courts of the Russian Federation due to the fact that, according to the legislation of Russia, the courts in the Russian Federation rehabilitate only persons who have been illegally prosecuted and convicted by the courts of the Russian Federation. We are dealing here with the so-called state of Ukraine.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I kindly ask you to consider the issue of issuing a legal act that will not recognize criminal records, sentences of Ukraine to residents of new regions convicted for political reasons.

More about sentences. Ukraine does not hesitate to keep in prison, in captivity for eight and a half years, to torture Russian-speaking residents just because we are Russians.

In 2018, public people's tribunals were held on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which found all the top political and military leadership of Ukraine guilty of war crimes. We sent this verdict to all human rights international organizations, but at that time we did not have an instrument for its execution, since the republics, as I have already said, were unrecognized.

Since 2014, war crimes have been recorded on the territory of the regions, it is also carried out by law enforcement agencies, then this work was taken up by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, and it is also carried out by the Public Commission, by the way, which colleagues spoke about earlier, by analogy with the commission in the Soviet Union.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, an international tribunal against the Nazis was widely announced this summer. Valery Alexandrovich Fadeev made a proposal to create an international commission to investigate the crimes of the Nazis, war crimes. I kindly ask you to return to this issue. The people of Donbass demand justice, they demand that this justice be restored. We are not asking to wipe the cities of Ukraine off the face of the earth, we know what a pain it is, we all experience it. We ask that a tribunal be held so that it is some kind of inoculation against Nazism and this brown plague stops its march around the world.

The consequences of the crimes of the Ukrainian government – ​​and if we are talking about Ukrainian crimes, in fact, it is the collective West that is fighting us with the hands of Ukraine – in addition to the wounded, killed civilians, there is also such a consequence as damage. For many years, public commissions have been operating on the territory of the regions to calculate the damage caused by the armed aggression of Ukraine. As of now, this amount is more than 1 trillion 321 billion Russian rubles, and this is not the final amount: it is growing every day. And we were not able to examine all the objects due to the fact that the front-line zones, constant shelling, there is simply no physical access to them.

One of the sections of the damage includes the damage caused to the homes of our citizens. For eight and a half years now, our people have been without a roof over their heads, because their houses have been destroyed by Ukraine, and they have been fighting this Nazism. They are forced to live in temporary accommodation centers, rent apartments, travel to neighboring regions. These are whole labor mining dynasties, dynasties of teachers, doctors. Donbass is generally a working region.

What else I want to note. According to the norms of international law, the state that is guilty of causing this damage, that is, the state of Ukraine, compensates for the damage. Since 2014, on the territory of two regions - the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics - more than ten thousand complaints have been filed with the European Court of Human Rights for damages, where the respondent was the state of Ukraine represented by the President - first Poroshenko, and then Zelensky. However, we have seen from our own experience how the so-called European Court of Human Rights is politicized, it does not perform the functions entrusted to it by the statute, and is not a fair judicial international instance. These lawsuits were not considered for a long time, and then, on far-fetched formal grounds, they were returned.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, in this regard, I kindly ask you to consider the issue of restoring the housing of the inhabitants of the region, in particular the territory, we call it historical, until February 24, 2022. These are the people who have been fighting Nazism for eight and a half years without a roof over their heads. They want to return to their homes, work for the good of the Motherland, live, just live and have children.

Despite the fact that the inhabitants of Russia are now in a very difficult condition and circumstances, the inhabitants of the region are daily shelling, we are working, we are forging victory in the rear, the men at the front are defending our Motherland, and we will not let you down. The fighters asked you to tell that you can count on them.

Thank you, Vladimir Vladimirovich.

Vladimir Putin:  You know, first of all, I would like to say that your men are fighting very worthily, they just set a real example for everyone else and very effectively. Even amazing! Strong men, real, it's true. This is the first. I couldn't not say it.

Now about the questions you raised. Citizens convicted for political reasons, residents of Donbass. Of course, it is necessary to stop all these cases and put an end to this state of affairs in the absence of the corpus delicti itself. And such an instruction, of course, will be given to the General Prosecutor's Office of Russia. I am sure that this issue will be worked out in the shortest possible time and a decision will be made.

About public tribunals. You said that since 2018 such decisions have been made by public tribunals. Even if something is not being implemented today, all the same, such decisions will not be superfluous, and the neo-Nazi regime and the action of this neo-Nazi regime should be evaluated.

The same applies to compensation by Ukraine for the damage caused to the Donbass, the inhabitants of Donbass, all these territories, today the new territories of Russia. This is also superfluous, definitely not at all. But I agree with you: it is pointless to wait for something from Ukraine and we need to help people who have lost their living quarters since February 24, 2014, when the difficult, tragic events began there. I think that it will be necessary to create a separate program to help people - a program for rebuilding housing.

We are now working in those territories where hostilities took place not long ago, including, say, in Mariupol, the work is quite active, we need to do everything so that people do not end up on the street, the Government has such instructions. Work is progressing at a fairly fast pace. I hope that people who live in Mariupol see this.

This happens at the expense of the federal budget, by the federal government, but also at the expense of some regions, including at the expense of St. Petersburg, whose specialists work in Mariupol and work quite energetically. But a program to support and restore housing in general in these new territories, of course, will need to be created. We will definitely do this and will help people through various channels to restore their rights, including, and above all, the right to a normal human life, to housing rights. Calmly, we will do all this in working order, there can’t even be any doubts.

Alexei Brod: Mr  President, I can continue the conversation with a few words, if I may. Also applied for a performance. Brod Alexander Semyonovich.

Vladimir Putin:  Please.

Alexander Brod: In continuation of the conversation, it is worth paying attention to the border regions, such as the Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk regions. We are also monitoring, traveled, recently visited the Belgorod region. Unfortunately, the regions are also being shelled, the inhabitants are being resettled deep into the regions. I must note that, nevertheless, both stability and calmness of the population are preserved. But this also requires additional funds: the restoration of housing, social facilities, accommodation of people.

I would like to draw your attention to the fact that in the Kursk region the provincial duma has developed a special law on border areas, which provides for additional financial support specifically for eliminating the consequences of these shellings and restoring infrastructure. It seems to me that it would be useful at the federal level to develop such a bill that would provide additional budgetary funds for the border regions bordering Ukraine to support regional budgets in order to cope with the restoration of the territories.

And taking this opportunity, I would like to briefly touch on a few more topics. Transnistria is an unrecognized territory, which now, due to the aggressive actions of Ukraine and Moldova, has actually found itself in a blockade. Over 200 thousand residents of the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic have Russian passports. They are sometimes unable to leave the republic, they are subjected to humiliating searches at the Moldovan border, at the Ukrainian border they are simply either arrested or not let through. Pressure on producers, restrictions on gas supplies from the Moldovan Republic. Also, it seems to me, it would be worth paying attention to our compatriots and fellow citizens living there.

Another issue is the issue of justice, one way or another it was touched upon here. I know that Tatyana Nikolaevna Moskalkova is working with experts on the development of a regulation on the creation of a new international court, given that Russia has withdrawn from the Council of Europe, and now the Russians cannot use the mechanisms of the European Court of Human Rights. Unfortunately, there are many complaints about Russian justice.

I myself was recently in one of the regions, I was present at the cassation court, I watched the process. Lawyers filed about 20 complaints, drew attention to gross violations during the trial, at the first and appeal instances, and, unfortunately, the court did not react to this in any way, the verdict was upheld. And there were such rude things, such as, for example, a doctor from a regional hospital in one of the Russian regions was involved as a translator of the text, that is, an absolutely person with no experience, without confirming his qualifications. This is just one of the examples. Therefore, I would like to know your position on the new international court.

And the question is whether the Supreme Court should have more contact with our Council, and with human rights organizations and experts, in order to specifically discuss those appeals, those proposals for improving Russian justice.

Last question. Since 2018, thanks to you, the institution of public observation in Russian elections has appeared. He has proven himself very well, and trust in elections and in the electoral system is growing, and competition is growing. But, it seems to me, it is worth thinking about the further development of this institution. In particular, I propose to expand the system of public monitoring, public control, in particular, the functions of public control could be transferred to the commissioners for human rights in the subjects, and similar councils in the regions, human rights councils in the subjects of the Russian Federation.

I believe that public control in elections should be extended not only to the day or days of voting, since multi-day voting is now used, but also to all stages of the electoral process, starting with registration - there is also a very problematic moment when someone disagrees , here it would be worth hearing the opinion of the public, as well as for the period of the campaign. I think public observation would increase the transparency and credibility of the elections.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin:  I'll start with where you ended.

Of course, public control at all stages of the electoral process, it seems to me, is in demand. Why not. It will make the election process, as you said, more transparent, which means that the result will enjoy greater confidence among our citizens, which in turn will increase the authority of any level of government that has gone through the elections.

I agree with you, we need to work on it. I will ask the Government and the Presidential Administration to think about your proposal and make their proposals.

As for the improvement of the justice system. Of course, we are constantly working to improve the justice system, and in this regard, I would like to draw your attention to something. Yes, the International Court of Human Rights is the structure to which indeed many have applied. But we have a Constitutional Court, we are not limited to just one system of justice. True, we have a single system of justice, this is understandable, but we have a separate Constitutional Court, citizens can apply to the Constitutional Court.

And the Chairman of the Constitutional Court, Valery Dmitrievich, recently told me how many appeals, even on very specific issues, come to the Constitutional Court from citizens of the Russian Federation to protect their rights. But this does not mean at all that we cannot think of some other institutions that protect the rights of citizens. Of course, you can think. Please formulate your proposals, we will consider them in the Administration and give appropriate instructions to other departments that are directly related to the work of the justice system.

Regarding citizens and their rights in Pridnestrovie, citizens of the Russian Federation. We must act on the basis of reality. We have always drawn the attention of all our partners and colleagues to the need to respect the rights of citizens of the Russian Federation living in this territory, in the territory of Pridnestrovie.

As for the socio-economic situation, it is not easy there, including the supply of energy resources. After all, we have actually been supplying gas there for free for many years. Is free. But lately, as gas flows through the territories of Moldova, problems arise there, because Moldova has its own difficulties, and the difficulties are great, we see this in the economic and social spheres.

A. Brod:  Moldova is simply blocking gas supplies to Pridnestrovie.

Vladimir Putin:  Not exactly they are blocking, because if they block, then part of Ukraine will not receive gas from the power plant. Therefore, the point is not that they are blocking: the point is that they themselves do not have enough. True, under these conditions, it is not clear why they store part of the gas, as they say, their Moldovan gas received from us, on the territory of Ukraine. It just needs to be dealt with, and I will ask the Ministry of Energy to look at this more closely.

We will certainly consider the rest of your suggestions. Thank you for bringing this to your attention.

Vladimir Fadeev: Mr  President, thank you.

We have been [working] for almost three hours now. Thank you so much for such intense work. Together with the Government and the Administration, with the relevant subdivisions and departments, we will prepare all the instructions that have been outlined.

On behalf of everyone, the entire Council, I want to thank you very much. And I hope that we bring benefit to the country and people.

Leonid Polyakov: Mr  President, may I ask you a personal request?

Vladimir Fadeev:  No, no, gentlemen, we are finishing. Vladimir Vladimirovich has the next event, we are already abusing it.

Vladimir Putin:  Please, let's go.

Leonid Polyakov:  This is a very important question.

Vladimir Putin:  Of course, let's not doubt it. I ask you to.

Leonid Polyakov: Mr  President, this is Leonid Polyakov. 15 years ago, at your personal request, at your direction, I participated in the creation of a new social science textbook. Then a set was created - social science and a history textbook. It seems to me that today there is an urgent need to create a new set. You quite rightly recall who started the war, when it started. All this should be in school textbooks.

I have a huge personal request for you. Let's start again - the initiative should come from you. Please do it. Let the new history textbook and the new social science textbook be created as soon as possible, without any delays, competition and other things. I think the school is waiting for this.

Thank you very much.

Vladimir Putin:  Good.

Leonid Vladimirovich, this is a very important question, you are absolutely right. Thank you for insisting on asking it. The question is indeed of national importance.

History is generally important for any people, especially at some difficult turns in the life of the state. For us, just such a moment has come when we must be very attentive to history and to the formation of public consciousness on the basis of reliable historical data, and everything is formed, of course, from school.

Therefore, I agree with Leonid Vladimirovich and ask the Presidential Administration, relevant government structures, interested departments not only to pay attention to this, but within the framework of the processes that are now going in this direction, to take the necessary steps together with experts and specialists in order to the proposal was implemented.

I would like to thank all the members of the President's Human Rights Council for the work you are doing. It is always important, and today it has a special meaning for our country. I repeat what I said at the beginning: it is of particular importance today, because people who, at the call of the heart, deal with issues important for the life of society and each individual, precisely because they do it at the call of the heart, achieve the best results in the most important areas of society and states.

Thank you very much. I would like to express the hope that we will continue this work next year as well. Well, in the current mode, of course, my colleagues from the Presidential Administration and those relevant departments with whom you are in contact one way or another - we are always at your disposal during this daily joint work.

I wish you all the best and once again I want to express my gratitude for your work.

Thanks a lot. Good luck.