Michael Jabara Carley is a specialist in 20th century international relations and the history of Russia and the Soviet Union. His research focuses on the Soviet Union’s relations with Western Europe and the United States during the years 1917 and 1945. This research has come together in a three-volume study, first of which, entitled, Stalin’s Gamble: The Search for Allies against Hitler, 1930–1936, will be published by the University of Toronto Press.
He is the author of 1939: The Alliance That Never Was and the Coming of World War II, Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations, and Une Guerre sourde: l’émergence de l’Union soviètique et les puissances occidentales.
Professor Carley has also written many essays on French intervention in the Russian Civil War (1917-1921), on Soviet relations with the Great Powers between the two world wars, on questions of “appeasement,” the origins and conduct of the Second World War, and on major current issues. He is a Professor of history at the University of Montreal. It is a great pleasure and honor to discuss his work with him in this interview.
The Postil (TP): You have written a trilogy on the Great Patriotic War, that is the Second World War as experienced by Soviet Union. The first part of this magisterial study will be published soon. What is your overall aim?
Michael Jabara Carley (MJC): My trilogy, as I call it, deals with the origins and early conduct of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War (Velikaia Otechestvennaia voina). The VOV is the name given to the war in Soviet and Russian history arising from the German invasion of the USSR on 22 June 1941. My work runs from January 1930 to December 1941. My project was first entitled “A Near-run Thing: The Improbable Grand Alliance of World War II,” supported by an “Insight” research grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My initial objective was to write a narrative history of how the USSR, Britain, and the United States, powers hostile to each other during the interwar years, became allies against Nazi Germany and the Axis. The work evolved from an envisioned single volume into three dealing with Soviet relations with the great and lesser European powers and the United States.
TP: Is there a difference between a Western historiography of WWII and a Russian one?
MJC: Oh yes, the difference is enormous. During the war, it was clear to all who had eyes to see that the Red Army played the key role in smashing the Nazi Wehrmacht and winning the war in Europe. The United States and Britain played supporting roles. After 1945 the war became an important object of propaganda in the Cold War. The new narrative was that the United States or Churchill single-handedly won the war in which the USSR was practically invisible.
In the western media, histories, iconography, Hollywood films, comic books, more recently video games, the Red Army is invisible. The key moment in the war was operation Overlord, the Normandy landings, when in fact, they were an anticlimax, grand to be sure, in a war whose outcome had already been determined by the Red Army. In the context of the Cold War, it was normal that the United States would seek in various ways to rub out the memories of the Soviet role in the war, for otherwise how could you portray the USSR as a menacing communist enemy.
TP: Would you tell us about the other two volumes in the trilogy?
MJC: Volume 1: Stalin’s Gamble: The Search for Allies against Hitler, 1930–1936, explores the Soviet Union’s efforts to organize a defensive alliance against Nazi Germany, in effect rebuilding the anti-German Entente of the First World War.
Volume 2: Stalin’s Failed Grand Alliance: The Struggle for Collective Security, 1936-1939 covers the period from May 1936 to August 1939. These were the last three years of peace in Europe during which occurred the great crises of the pre-war period (the Spanish civil war, Anschluss and the Munich sellout of Czechoslovakia) and the last Soviet efforts to organise an anti-Nazi alliance.
Volume 3: Stalin’s Great Game: War and Neutrality, 1939-1941 covers the first phase of the war in Europe, notably the disappearance of Poland, the Winter War between the USSR and Finland, the fall of France, the battle of Britain, and the Nazi build-up and invasion of the USSR. All this occurs within the broader framework of Soviet diplomacy and intelligence operations and Stalin’s failures to interpret correctly the signs of Hitler’s intention to destroy the Soviet Union.
TP: Your work has focused on Russian archival records. Were there any surprises, which made you rethink your position(s)?
MJC: My work has focused on Russian archival sources and western archival sources (inter alia French, British, US, etc.). The Russian sources indicate—and this will be a surprise for some people—that Soviet foreign policy as conducted by the Commissariat for foreign affairs (NKID) functioned like that of any other foreign ministry. It sought to define and protect Soviet national interests, as perceived by the NKID, and promoted amongst the Soviet leadership, especially in the Politburo (in effect the Soviet cabinet), which over time became synonymous with a single person, Iosif Vissarionovich Stalin. In the 1920s this meant seeking to improve political and economic relations with the main western powers. No country was too small to escape NKID attention and wooing. In the 1930s it meant seeking to build an anti-Nazi alliance to contain Hitlerite Germany or to defeat it in war if containment failed. The first generation of Soviet diplomats were well-educated (or self-taught), multilingual, sophisticated, and good at their jobs.
So? What is so surprising about these “discoveries?” Several generations of western historians have maintained that Soviet foreign policy was made by the Communist International or Comintern and intended to pursue world socialist revolution and not the protection of Soviet national interests. These did not exist. My previous book Silent Conflict deals with the complicated interaction of the NKID, Comintern, Stalin, and the Politburo in the 1920s. Suffice it to say that traditional western historiography requires revision based on the study of Russian archives. We now have histories before the opening of Soviet archives and histories after their opening.
TP: The Soviet era is largely dominated by Joseph Stalin. Are there aspects about him that are ignored or misconstrued by Western historians?
MJC: People have been writing books about Stalin since the interwar years. His recent biographer Stephen Kotkin reminds us that he was a “human being.” He was that, but of course human beings can also be serial killers. Stalin was what he was, amongst other things, crude, cynical, vengeful, murderous. He placed little value on human life and freely dispensed with it.
In the realm of foreign policy, he had a more or less normal relationship with the NKID and its leadership until the purges. In the 1930s his principal NKID interlocutor was Maksim M. Litvinov, the commissar or narkom for foreign affairs. Stalin’s interactions with Litvinov were those of a head of government with his/her foreign minister. There was give and take on both sides, but most of the time until 1939 Stalin supported Litvinov’s policy recommendations. Not always but most of the time. It is a “normal” side of Stalin that we sometimes miss because of his ruthlessness and the purges.
TP: In the years leading up to WWII, how did the West view, or understand, Stalin and Soviet Russia? And, likewise, how did Stalin view the West?
MJC: The “west” did not have a uniform view of Stalin. There was the mainstream media view of him as bloodthirsty communist. In some government circles, in the British Foreign Office, for example, he was perceived as a ruthless “realist” looking to secure his own power. Western iconography, political posters, cartoons, etc., are rich in their portrayal of Stalin, amongst other roles, as a vampire feeding on the blood of innocents. This was a consistent view of him during the interwar years with some moderation in the 1930s when western realists—Winston Churchill is the best known of these people— recognised the need to cooperate with the USSR against Nazi Germany. The “realists” were always a minority amongst western governing elites and were never able to impose this policy in government until the Nazi invasion of the USSR. Of course, western communists were more disposed to recognise Stalin as the great leader of the USSR. They had to or were expelled from European parties or purged when Stalin got his hands on them. There were however exceptions to the rule when communists (in France for example) could initiate policy changes accepted in Moscow.
As for Stalin, he remained a communist, but he was willing to cooperate with the western powers against Hitler both in the 1930s and after June 1941. We operate under different social systems, he often said, but this should not prevent us from recognizing common interests and cooperating against common foes.
TP: Then, there is the notorious year, 1932, with its Great Famine, in which 5 to 7 million died. Was this famine “political strategy,” ethnic cleansing (Holodomor), a natural disaster, or something else?
MJC: I only deal in passing with this issue in my work because the famine did not affect foreign policy, but the best recent treatment of the famine is in the second volume of Kotkin’s biography of Stalin. Kotkin argues that the famine was the result of various factors, political, economic, weather, and insect infestations. It was not aimed at the Ukraine as a form of genocide or “ethnic cleansing.” The famine affected the entire Soviet grain belt with Kazakhstan being the hardest hit.
TP: The next year, 1933, brought Adolf Hitler to power. How did Stalin and the Soviets view Hitler?
MJC: The initial Soviet reaction to Hitler’s assumption of power in early 1933 was to try to maintain the “Rapallo” policy of tolerable relations with Germany. Nazi hostility to the USSR in 1933 was so intense that the maintenance of Rapallo became impossible and in December 1933 the Politburo approved a shift in policy to collective security against Nazi Germany. This meant in effect the rebuilding of the World War I Entente against Wilhelmine Germany. Litvinov became the great Soviet spokesperson for this policy, but it was not his personal policy, it was that of Stalin and the Soviet government. Stalin was the Soviet government. No policy, large or small, could pass without his approval.
TP: The years leading up to 1939 are complex and often little understood, especially in regards to the motivations and concerns of Soviet Russia. Did the Soviets see a war coming?
MJC: There is not the slightest doubt that the Soviet leadership saw war coming. Nazi Germany was the great danger to European peace and security. Litvinov and other Soviet diplomats liked to quote to their western counterparts Mein Kampf, Hitler’s best-selling book, outlining his plans for European conquest. France and the USSR were identified as targets of German conquest. Germany needed Lebensraum, additional living space in the USSR. Slavs, Jews, Roma were lower species of human being good only for slavery or death.
TP: What was the role of Britain and France in this regard? Were they more suspicious of Hitler or of Stalin, or of both equally? And why could they not form an alliance with Stalin against Hitler?
MJC: The answer to this question is complicated and is the subject of Stalin’s Gamble, vol. 1 of my trilogy. In France and Britain anti-communism was a driving force, though its intensity fluctuated from time to time during the interwar years. Political and economic elites were largely anti-communist, but not entirely, as I have noted above. This was especially true during the 1930s after Hitler became German chancellor. One Soviet diplomat noted that the great question of the 1930s was who was enemy no. 1, Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union? Western elites, with important exceptions, got the answer wrong to this question. Fascism was the great bulwark against communist or socialist revolution, the ideology arising from the crisis of capitalism during the interwar years. Remember, Germany was not the only fascist state, the Duce Benito Mussolini had taken power in Italy in 1922. In France and Britain there were tolerant attitudes toward Italian fascists. If only Hitler would soften the hard edges of Nazism and adopt the “softer” fascism of Mussolini, it would be easier to accept him. For numerous European conservatives Hitlerite Germany was not an enemy but a potential ally against the left.
When Soviet diplomats tried to warn of the Nazi danger, many western counterparts did not buy the argument that Hitler was the problem. This was especially so after the eruption of the Spanish civil war in July 1936. It looked to many conservatives that communism might take root in Spain and then spread to France. What a catastrophe! So, when Soviet diplomats warned of Hitlerite Germany, conservatives, the political right, but also spreading into the political centre and centre-left, saw this as a ruse de guerre to spread communism into Europe. Collective security and mutual assistance against the common foe, did not work as an argument, because European elites did not see or did not want to see Hitler as a common foe. The British Foreign Office was against collective security and against anti-fascism as arguments for unity. Anti-communism was a major impediment to an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance against Hitler, even in 1939 when war looked increasingly inevitable.
TP: Then there is Poland. How would you characterize the Polish view of Hitler, especially given that Poland was allied with Nazi Germany until 1939 (a little-known fact)? What were Poland’s ambitions and motivations?
MJC: Yes, then there was Poland. I call it the skunk in the woodpile of collective security, but it was not the only one. A Polish state reappeared on the map of Europe in 1918 at the end of World War I. It was intensely nationalist. During 1919-1920 Poland sought to reestablish its frontiers of 1772, as a great European power. This led to war with Soviet Russia and a white peace, signed in early 1921 which satisfied neither side. Poland did not re-establish its 1772 frontiers, but obtained important Ukrainian and Byelorussian populated territories, which Soviet Russia saw as lost because of military weakness.
The Polish leadership saw itself situated between two potentially hostile great powers, and so explained its foreign policy as neither one or the other. But when push came to shove the Polish leadership always leaned toward Germany. In January 1934 Poland signed a non-aggression pact with Germany. Soviet offers of rapprochement were rejected. In following years Poland acted as a saboteur of collective security and worked against Soviet diplomacy. Everywhere in central and eastern Europe, diplomats warned that Poland was marching toward its ruin if it continued to pursue a pro-German, anti-Soviet policy. I would not say Poland was a Nazi “ally” but it was certainly an accomplice in 1938 when it cooperated with Germany to bring about the dismemberment of the Czechoslovak state. For its troubles Poland got a small portion of Czechoslovak territory. Incredibly, in 1939 it continued to sabotage attempts to conclude an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance. It did so until the very day the Nazi Wehrmacht invaded Poland on 1 September 1939.
TP: Was the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 the Soviet attempt to thwart war, or was it a reaction to the Munich Conference of 1938, in which the West thought it had won “peace in our time?”
MJC: The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact was not a Soviet attempt to thwart war, it was an attempt to stay out of the war and to remain neutral. Yes, in part, it was a reaction to the Munich accords, but it was more than that. It was the direct result of six years of failed Soviet attempts to construct an anti-Nazi grand alliance. One by one, the prospective members of this failed grand alliance fell away: the United States in the spring-summer 1934, France paradoxically in late 1934 (in a more complicated process), Italy, yes, fascist Italy in 1935, Britain in February 1936, and Romania in August 1936. One after the other they fell away; and Poland of course, the spoiler of collective security, the proverbial skunk in the woodpile, never contemplated an alliance with the USSR against Germany. Moscow was always the undesirable ally, the greater enemy, even though, paradoxically, it was Poland’s only option for salvation.
The Soviet Union could not, on its own, organise mutual assistance against Nazi Germany. Collective security had to be a grand political coalition from left to centre-right, a World War I union sacrée, of all-in national defence of all political parties against a common foe. In the west no one wanted it; no one wanted the Soviet Union as an ally (with the exception of communists and “realists”; a Soviet ambassador called them “white crows”) in a potential war-fighting alliance, in a situation where there was no agreement on the common foe. Even Czechoslovakia, the most needy potential ally, would not go all-in with the USSR. No eastern European country would without France and Britain, but France would not march without Britain, and Britain would not march at all.
This is a complicated story related in volumes 1 and 2 of my trilogy. In the great cover-up of the genuine history of the origins of World War II after 1945, it was the necessary corollary of Cold War propaganda to rub out the primary role of the Red Army in the destruction of the Wehrmacht. Early on, revisionist historians began to put the story together, starting with the “Guilty Men,” the appeasers, who prepared the way to catastrophe. It was the release of Soviet government papers in the 1990s, however, which has allowed the emergence of a more complex narrative, constructed with the assistance of Soviet eyes. In this narrative Stalin, the “human being,” understandably could not trust the British and French governments, conniving, manipulative, unwilling, to be all-in allies against Nazi Germany even in August 1939.
As it was, the British and French left their ally Poland to blow in the wind when Germany invaded it. Stalin correctly assumed that France and Britain would sit on their hands while Germany and the USSR fought it out in the east. Would they have been more loyal to the USSR than they had been to Poland? Of course not, if you asked Stalin. However, war is full of the unexpected. The USSR ended up fighting a ground war practically alone against Nazi Germany from June 1941 to September 1943 and even after the Normandy landings still carried the main burden of fighting on the ground. That of course is another story.
TP: World War II, when it broke out, was the result of diplomatic failure on the part of Britain, France, and Poland. Is this a fair assessment?
MJC: I have answered this question in my above responses, but yes, Britain, France, and Poland bear a large responsibility for the failure to organize an early grand alliance in Europe against Hitler.
TP: Could the Allies have defeated Hitler without the Soviets?
MJC: No, and this is not a conclusion made in hindsight. The main argument of western “realists” was that without the USSR, France and Britain could not win a war against Nazi Germany and would certainly lose it. Britain had no army to speak of, two divisions could at once be sent to France in the event of war. The French army could not alone fight off a German invasion. On the other hand, the Red Army could at once mobilise 100 divisions, in fact, more, against Nazi Germany. Churchill and former prime minister David Lloyd George said it plainly in the House of Commons during the spring of 1939. Victory was impossible without an alliance with the USSR. Do the math of relative contributions to boots on the ground: Britain, two divisions; the USSR, 100. This is not to mention 35 Czechoslovak divisions prior to the Munich betrayal. The French and British governing elites liked to count every enemy twice over and potential allies not at all.
TP: In your book, Silent Conflict: A Hidden History of Early Soviet-Western Relations, you discuss Soviet relations with the West. How would you categorize these? And did these early years set the tone for the Cold War?
MJC: With the notable exception of Soviet-German relations and the conclusion of the treaty of Rapallo (spring 1922) which regularised Soviet relations with Weimar Germany, Soviet-western relations were poor. Anti-Communism was an insurmountable obstacle to better relations even though there were “realists,” notably in France, who advocated rapprochement. The Comintern was active in China where a great revolutionary movement was underway. Britain especially had important commercial interests in China threatened by the revolutionary movement. I see this period as the early (or stage 1 of the) Cold War which ended in 1941. Western-Soviet hostility in the 1920s was an impediment to building an anti-Nazi alliance in the 1930s.
TP: The West has long had deep-seated Russophobia. What accounts for this?
MJC: Russophobia is not really a subject directly treated in my work. It is a form of western racism against Russia, motivated these days by the Russian threat to US world domination. This is a topic for another discussion.
TP: Are there other projects that you are researching?
MJC: I am getting on in years, and the publication of my trilogy will take up my time, inshallah, for the next couple of years. I see the trilogy as the capstone of my work as historian and author. After the trilogy is published, as I hope it will be, who knows?
TP: Professor Carley, thank you so much for your time.
President Joe Biden’s historic nomination of Ambassador Lynne Tracy to serve as the first woman ambassador to the Russian Federation has flown mostly under the media’s radar. And with her late-November confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee out of the way, Tracy’s final confirmation by the full Senate is the next step.
And so: Who is Ambassador Tracy?
For one, she is a well regarded member of the senior foreign service who was awarded by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for courage under (literal) fire in Pakistan. She is currently Chief of Mission in Yerevan, Armenia, where she has received mixed grades by some critics for her handling of Azerbaijan’s war on that country.
As for her appointment to Moscow, Peitro Shakarian, an Armenian-American scholar of Soviet and Russian history, says he “would not be too optimistic about this appointment, if we are looking for a dramatic improvement in U.S.-Russian relations. Tracy is essentially a typical State Department career diplomat whose views on Russia and the region reflect those of the Washington Beltway consensus since the 1990s.”
And, indeed, during her confirmation hearing November 30, Tracy, in keeping with recent diplomatic fashion, decried the Putin regime’s “intensifying repression against civil society, independent media, human rights activists, pro-democracy advocates.” Yet if Tracy’s tenure in Moscow is to have any chance at success, she might consider abandoning the activist mindset that has become de rigueur among the diplomatic corps in recent years and return to the traditional practice of diplomacy as exemplified by a coterie of distinguished Cold war-era U.S. envoys to the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s.
It is perhaps useful to recall the series of crises between the United States and the Soviet Union that were an all-too-regular feature of those first two decades of the Cold War. Helping U.S. presidents navigate that perilous period were a number of remarkable diplomats, including Ambassador Charles ‘Chip’ Bohlen, who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1957. Looking back, the period now seems to be something of a “Golden Age” of American diplomacy, at least as far as the Soviet Union was concerned. The approach taken by Bohlen and his colleagues is instructive and remains relevant to the current period of East-West confrontation.
U.S. diplomacy as carried out in those days was marked by pragmatism and an understanding of the hard calculus of national interest. American diplomats back then would perhaps have been puzzled by the recent fashion of seeking to impose American “values” as a kind of precondition for diplomacy — or even legitimacy.
Bohlen served as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 1953 to 1957 and remained a valued adviser on Soviet affairs during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. His time in Moscow coincided with the release of Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech”condemning the excesses of Stalin (1956); the creation of the Warsaw and Baghdad Pacts (1955); the Hungarian revolution and October uprisings in Poland (1956).
Bohlen’s approach was marked by what the historian T. Michael Ruddy has described as a “restrained pessimism.” The secretary of state under whom Bohlen served during his time as ambassador, John Foster Dulles, was, like the current one, an evangelist for American primacy and Bohlen was often put in the position of having to advise Washington against overreacting to Soviet provocations. Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1957, Bohlen saw, despite the Soviet crackdown in Hungary, ways to work with the Soviets, particularly in the area of arms control. Whether dealing with Khruschev’s Soviet Union or Putin’s Russia, it would seem a mistake to link progress in one area (such as human rights) with progress in others (such as disarmament).
Bohlen swam against the tide of conventional wisdom which then prevailed in the Washington of the 1950s by asserting that the United States should approach the Soviet Union as a traditional nation-state not merely as the embodiment of communist ideology —accommodation, limited and pragmatic, was possible.
As his biographer Ruddy put it, Bohlen “never doubted that the Soviet Union presented a threat, a threat created by a unique combination of ideology and national interest. But he especially saw it as a nation, leading him to believe that limited accommodations were possible.” As Bohlen’s successor in Moscow, Llewellyn Thompson once observed,“The trouble with Americans is that we see everything in black or white, but there’s a lot of gray in diplomacy.”
There’s a lesson in that. Today, Russia’s security interests are viewed as illegitimate because of the widespread belief that Putin is, among other things, the leader of a global authoritarian movement, if not the embodiment of evil itself. But what Bohlen and his illustrious cohort understood is that, for Russia, it is interests that matter.
And so, as Tracy prepares to take up her position in Moscow, one can only wish her well and hope she takes a page from Bohlen who understood that the hard calculus of national security interests, rather than ideology, was what drove the Kremlin to act the way it did on the world stage. Today, the pursuit of a purely pragmatic relationship with Putin’s Russia seems the right course.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues,
As always at the end of the year we are holding a meeting of the Council for Strategic Development and National Projects to see what has been done to reach our national goals that are, I must emphasise, the basic, integral guidelines for national development until 2030.
As a key item of our practical agenda, we will discuss today systemic mechanisms for supporting investment in technological projects that ensure Russia’s technological sovereignty, including industrial clusters that I talked about at the St Petersburg Economic Forum, as you will remember. Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Industry Denis Manturov and Head of the State Council Commission on Industry Alexei Dyumin will make reports on this issue.
But before that, I think it is necessary to outline a number of priority tasks of our national policy for 2023 and to suggest new solutions that will allow us to develop more confidently. In part, they will help us counter the challenges that our economy and our citizens are facing today in the context of the serious, tangible and even tectonic changes that are affecting the entire world.
As you know, an unprecedented sanctions aggression has been launched against Russia. It was aimed at crushing our economy, wrecking our national currency – the ruble – by stealing our currency reserves, and provoking a devastating inflation in a short span of time.
As we can see – in fact, this is common knowledge – this plan has fallen through. The Russian business community and government bodies worked in a well-coordinated and professional manner and our citizens displayed unity and responsibility. The Government, the Bank of Russia and the Russian regions stabilised the situation by pooling their efforts.
The GDP for this year is predicted to fall about 2.5 percent. So there will be a decline, as I already mentioned in public. True, recently I spoke about 2.9 percent, but the latest forecasts put it at a bit less – 2.5 percent. Of course, this is also a decline, but not the crushing 20 percent that many Western, and frankly, our experts forecasted at the time when the collective West hit us with the economic war. Moreover, in the third quarter, the economic dynamics already showed slight growth after the minimal figures of the second quarter.
After a serious surge in March-April, the level of prices has actually remained the same since May, while the Russian ruble has become one of the world’s strongest currencies since the start of the year.
We achieved this result by making decisions to regulate the capital drain, convert payments for gas into rubles, actively use national currencies in trade with our partners, but primarily, of course, by pursuing a responsible fiscal policy.
Russia’s public finances remain stable. In January-November of this year, the federal budget was executed with a surplus of 560 billion rubles, and the consolidated budget with a surplus of 1.451 trillion rubles.
At the same time, in the current and next year, we expect a federal budget deficit of about 2 percent of the GDP, and this will be the best result among the G20 countries. I won’t cite examples at this point. Experts are well aware of the figures on other G20 countries. Moreover, the budget for the next three years provides for a gradual reduction of the deficit to less than one percent of the GDP in 2025.
We will retain our responsible fiscal and macro-economic policy, which will guarantee not only the full funding of social commitments but also the resolution of new tasks facing the country in the next three years.
I would like to emphasise that this policy is important not only for countering current challenges but also in the long-term perspective. We will adhere to this policy, focusing our attention on turning it primarily into a firm foundation of economic growth for years ahead.
When we discussed the economic situation in the world, we set two main goals for this year: to reduce poverty and inequality, and to continue the development policy. Everyone knows that sanctions are being imposed on us, and that we will certainly only move forward relying above all on our own reserves and resources.
Therefore, an important decision was made on monthly payments to families with children aged 8 to 17 years. This decision directly influenced more than 5 million children. This was followed by the advanced indexation of the subsistence minimum, the minimum wage and pension increases of 10 percent. As a result, the poverty rate fell to 10.5 percent in the third quarter. Of course, this is a small drop, but a drop still. The incomes of the poorest part of the population also grew by 27.8 percent in nominal terms – in nominal terms, I want to emphasise this and say again that we are talking about people with the lowest incomes, – which helped to reduce the level of inequality a little.
We have kept all the main state programmes, continued to upgrade primary healthcare, relocate people from emergency housing, repair existing and build new roads, eliminate landfills and sites of accumulated environmental damage, build new schools, cultural centres, rural libraries and much more.
Moreover, new programmes have been launched, such as the overhaul of schools. This and next year alone, about 3,000 schools will be repaired across Russia.
Tools such as infrastructure budget loans and bonds have been made available, which will help the Russian regions attract more than 300 billion rubles this year.
We have support programmes and mechanisms for preferential and family mortgages. Loans worth 1.7 trillion rubles were issued under both programmes. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Russian families have improved their living conditions, and construction as sector has become a driver of the Russian economy: up 5.8 percent in ten months. It is expected that this year will be the most successful, a record year for domestic housing construction. We will sum up the final figures a little later. Mr Khusnullin reported to me these figures yesterday or the day before yesterday, and they are impressive. Let’s look at the final results.
We will continue developing our country regardless of any foreign pressure. Moreover, we will certainly become stronger, carry out entirely new projects, upgrade Russia’s technology levels and ensure economic, financial, technological and personnel sovereignty.
At today’s meeting, and in my speech, I would like to outline six key tasks for 2023 the resolution of which will allow us to move successfully towards reaching our national goals up to 2030.
The first task is to take cooperation with our key partners to a new level. We will remove restrictions in logistics and finances for this purpose.
Let me recall that by introducing the sanctions, the Western countries were trying to push Russia to the periphery of world development, but we will never follow a path of self-isolation and autarky, as I have said more than once. On the contrary, we are expanding and will continue to expand our interaction with anyone that is interested, those who clearly understand others’ interests as well as their own interests. Russia is building up trade and investment relations with these countries. Our foreign trade is moving towards dynamic regions and markets and dynamically developing countries. In fact, we have been doing this for many years – even without the current developments in the world.
So what has Europe achieved by imposing these restrictions? First, this is what economists call an unprecedented, forced leap of inflation in its own home, the eurozone. In November, inflation in the eurozone averaged 10 percent. Some countries recorded exorbitant figures of more than 20, 21 and 25 percent.
Today, the authorities in the European Union are saying themselves that the policy of their main partner – the United States – is directly leading to Europe’s de-industrialisation. They are even trying to present some bills for this to their American suzerain. Sometimes, they even sound offended; they want to know why they deserve this. I’d like to ask them, in this context, and what did you expect? How else should one treat those that allow others to wipe their feet on them? But, after all, this is their business.
I will make a short digression regarding trade relations with the European Union. Despite the sanctions – such a curious thing – over the first nine months of this year, the supply of basic goods from Russia to the EU countries increased by 1.5 times. Aggregate Russian exports increased by 42 percent, and our trade surplus grew 2.3 times, up to US$138 billion. In fact, the European Union continues to consume our goods and services, while holding back the reverse flows. The situation with such imbalances cannot continue indefinitely.
What should we do? We will look for other, more promising partners in actively growing regions of the world economy. These are Asia, the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. It is to the markets of friendly countries that we will reorient Russian energy supplies. Thus, over the first nine months of this year, oil exports to partner countries increased by almost a quarter.
An important step to reduce the impact of the sanctions and other hostile actions against Russia will be the development of port and pipeline infrastructure in the south and east, including increasing natural gas exports.
Projects such as the Kovykta field, the Power of Siberia 2 and the Far Eastern route will make it possible to increase gas supplies to the east to 48 billion cubic metres by 2025, and to 88 billion cubic metres by 2030. In fact, this is more than 60 percent of gas supplies to the West last year. In turn, the new LNG projects in Yamal will increase the production of liquefied natural gas by 70 billion cubic metres by 2030, which will also help expand the geography of exports.
Some of the key growing consumers of Russian gas are our neighbours, including Turkey. Its gas infrastructure has serious potential. In the coming years, we are planning to create, as I already said, a gas hub.
If we talk about creating an electronic platform, this can be done within the next few months. It is there that we will largely determine the final price for our European consumers, because what they have done on their platforms is actually crazy. And now they are still trying to make us feel guilty for what they did themselves, with their own hands.
Furthermore, Russia is playing a key role in the global agrarian market. This is the result of work by our agricultural producers, and I would like to thank them very much, to express my most sincere gratitude to them. We are one of the biggest suppliers of grain, vegetable oils and fertilisers to the world. That said, our absolute priority is to meet domestic demand and fulfil in good faith our commitments under our foreign contracts.
In the past five months alone, Russia has exported about 22 million tonnes of grain, mostly to Asian and African countries. We are ready to supply another 4 or 5 million tonnes of grain before this year expires. By the end of the agricultural year on June 30, 2023, we will be able to bring our grain exports to 50 million tonnes, considering our record harvest this year. I would like to again congratulate our rural producers on this.
We continue exporting mineral fertilisers to world markets. In the 11 months of this year, our exports exceeded 25 million tonnes. Unlike the Western countries that are shamelessly pulling the blanket over themselves, Russia is helping the poorest nations of Africa, Asia and other regions, by supplying them with food and other products. In the next few months, we will be ready to supply the needy countries with about 260,000 tonnes of fertiliser at no charge, as I have said many times. We have already sent 20,000 tonnes of fertiliser to Malawi.
For all the importance of the energy and food sectors, we will primarily focus on non-resource goods and mutual investment in our foreign ties. We consider the development of a convenient and independent payment infrastructure in national currencies to be a firm foundation for promoting international cooperation. We have already made good progress in this respect. According to the latest data, the share of using the Russian ruble in our international transactions has doubled compared to December 2021 reaching one third of all transactions. If we count the use of the currencies of friendly countries, the share is over half.
Different payment mechanisms are also on our agenda. I am referring to the use of digital currencies of central banks and the technology of distributed registries that remove the political risks from using the currencies of unfriendly countries.
We are developing reliable and safe transport corridors to help companies establish logistics and cooperation ties. Due to its geographical location and geopolitical opportunities, Russia can protect these logistics corridors against risks. Once again, the foundation lies in both our economic and financial potential, and the capabilities of our law enforcement sector in general.
Construction of the Moscow-Kazan motorway continues, which will connect St Petersburg with cities in the Urals and Siberia, including Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk and Tyumen, with a high-quality motorway, and in the long run, with Irkutsk and Vladivostok. The motorway will stretch to Kazakhstan via the city of Togliatti, while providing direct access to Mongolia and China in the east.
This will allow us to connect the country’s western and eastern territories more comprehensively; it will connect Russia’s markets to its key partners’ markets and help develop major Eurasian corridors.
We are also focusing on the North-South international transport corridor, with plans to expand the transport and logistics infrastructure towards the Caspian Sea. As early as next year, the Volga-Caspian Sea Shipping Canal will allow passage of vessels with a draft of no less than 4.5 metres, which will significantly expand Russia’s routes to the countries in the Middle East and India. We will also focus on developing rail access to the seaports in the Azov and Black Sea basins, and we will boost the port capacities.
Our plans include further modernisation of the eastern railway network, mainly the Trans-Siberian Railway and the Baikal-Amur Mainline. This will substantially increase passenger and cargo traffic, boost business activity and social mobility, provide vast opportunities for trade and new projects and, most importantly, help us successfully achieve our ambitious national goals to develop Siberia and the Far East. Meanwhile, we will continue working on such projects as the rapid modernisation of the Murmansk transport hub, the deepening and widening of navigation channels along major rivers and waterways, and construction of the Northern Latitudinal Railway in the period ahead.
I would like to emphasize once again that we should ensure comprehensive development of the infrastructure of the Volga region, the Urals, Siberia, Trans-Baikal and the Far East, and focus not solely on seaports and their approach routes but to develop land routes as well. For instance, the city of Chita, with proper federal support, could become a major logistics centre for cooperation with China.
Let me add that in early August, the Government approved a plan for developing the Northern Sea Route until 2035. In the near future, this route will see increased traffic as well. We have talked about this many times and are making all necessary efforts to bring this to fruition.
This year has shown that promoting cooperation in the EAEU was the right thing to do. I would like to speak separately about this as well. Our economies are developing ties amid global market volatility and an unfavourable global climate. Thus, in the first nine months of this year, the EAEU’s mutual trade increased by almost 12 percent. That said, trade in food and other agricultural products grew by more than one third.
Naturally, trade is just a part of Russia’s international relations. We intend to cooperate in science, technology and culture with the same enthusiasm. We are already implementing relevant measures and initiatives. Thus, to streamline the labour market in the EAEU, we launched the Work Without Borders system, which includes over 500,000 vacancies and 2 million CVs from all EAEU countries.
We have developed good cooperation in nuclear power engineering. Rosatom creates the entire chain for the construction and operation of nuclear power plants abroad, including on the build-own-operate principle.
In the near future, we will expand cooperation on projects in energy, agriculture, industry, aircraft engineering, medicine, transport, outer space, digital technology, environmental protection and other high-tech areas. Together with our partners, we will seek leadership in creating artificial intelligence elements with strict observance of ethical and moral standards. We discussed this issue recently with our colleagues, in particular at a Sber event.
Of course, the specific parameters of such cooperation are a subject for discussion but let me repeat – mutual interest is the most important factor in this respect.
The second task for 2023 is to enhance technological sovereignty and ensure faster growth of the processing industry. I don’t even know if this is the second or the first task, but if it is the second one, this is only so in terms of figures. In the near future, we will expand joint implementation of energy and agricultural projects.
Sanctions restrictions have confronted our country with many difficult tasks – we have problems with spare parts, a shortage of technological solutions and disrupted logistics. But, on the other hand, this is opening up new opportunities for us, encouraging us to build an economy with full rather than partial technological, production, personnel and scientific sovereignty.
Let me stress that it is important not simply to replace certain commodity positions, but to achieve leadership in key, vital areas, such as, as we have already said, artificial intelligence, computing and data transmission, new industrial technologies and others. A number of events and conferences will be held in these areas in the near future, and I will definitely ask members of the Government to take part in them, and I will try to do the same. At the same time, let me remind you that I have already given instructions to prepare and launch new programmes in robotics and aircraft drones in the coming year.
Of course, it is impossible to gain technological sovereignty in an instant, as they say: but we need to continue this systemic work for the future. In this context, it is also necessary to expedite the preparation of updated plans for the development of key sectors of the domestic economy, such as the metals industry, the automotive industry, and energy; to adjust plans for the development of the military-industrial complex and the parameters of the state defence order, including considering the results of the work of the Governmental Coordination Council for the material support of the Armed Forces in the special military operation.
At the same time, I would like to emphasise that delays and a formal approach are unacceptable here. For example, we have agreed to initiate preferential leasing terms for the domestic production of aircraft and water transport vessels with funding from the National Welfare Fund. Unfortunately, this tool has not yet worked.
I would like my colleagues from the Government to focus on implementing this programme in full. The funds for aircraft leasing should be provided as soon as this year, and for water transport vessels no later than the first quarter of 2023.
Next year’s task is to ensure the outstripping growth of the processing industry, build up capacities in a short time, and create new production lines. And the key issues here are the availability of raw materials, development and technologies, equipment, qualified personnel and prepared sites.
The tool for industrial mortgage loans has already been launched. Now a soft loan of up to 500 million rubles at a rate of 3 to 5 percent for up to seven years can be approved for the purchase of production facilities. I think it would be good to extend this industrial mortgage loan programme beyond acquiring production facilities and use it to construct or upgrade them as well. I would like to draw the Government’s attention to the fact that this mechanism must receive funding.
In addition, new preferential terms in industrial clusters will go into effect on January 1. It is designed to complement the existing mechanisms for supporting industrial projects, including the successful operation of the Industrial Development Fund. I would like to emphasise what we have mentioned more than once – the Fund is really doing a good job.
It is necessary to reduce the fiscal and administrative burden on residents of industrial clusters. They will also be entitled to low insurance payments and income tax benefits. The demand for their innovative products that are just entering the market will be supported by long-term orders and subsidies from the state.
According to estimates, these and other measures should ensure by 2030 the implementation of in-demand projects totalling over 10 trillion rubles. In fact, in 2023 the expected investment in these projects may already reach 2 trillion rubles. Denis Manturov will report in more detail on this issue today.
The third task is to ensure the financial sovereignty of our country.
Owing to Russia’s solid balance of payments, we do not have to borrow abroad. We do not have to go into bondage and we are not going to do that – our economy has financial resources. We must make them more accessible to the projects of the new economy, for building high-tech enterprises and producing products with high added value.
The work of our financial system must satisfy the requirements that were previously met by Western sources of funding, including trade and project financing. It should ensure the inflow of long-term savings and investment into joint-stock capital and investment in large-scale infrastructure and new production projects. I would like to emphasise that investment in high-tech businesses is particularly important. Next year, we must make tangible progress in all of these areas. I would like to draw the attention of the Finance Ministry and the Bank of Russia to this point.
Colleagues,
Forward-looking infrastructure development is a vital condition for growing business and investment activity and creating jobs. This is the fourth most important task.
We have already achieved good, tangible results in upgrading the federal road network that connects regions and stiches together the space of our enormous country. Our next step is to put regional roads in order. As we recalled literally the day before yesterday, in 2024, no less than 85 percent of roads in our biggest metropolitan areas and over half of regional and municipal roads must be in normal condition. They must become modern and safe. This is what we spoke about at a meeting when we were opening completed transport infrastructure facilities.
The pace is good. We have grounds to believe that planned road repair assignments may be completed ahead of schedule. It is important to keep up the pace.
The construction and repair of networks, utilities and public transport systems is extensive work carried out at the regional level, including under national projects; we need to pay special attention to this. National project funds are planned until 2024, while some regions are ready to accelerate and put infrastructure into operation a year earlier.
In this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the following. We need to support this initiative. I ask the Government to create an advanced financing mechanism for infrastructure construction under national projects by the end of this year. Okay? It is still necessary to redistribute funds where people are doing well, in the interests of those who are doing this, in order to give the regions access to the financing planned for 2024 as early as next year and thereby shift the plans to the left. Once again, for those who are working successfully and effectively, it is necessary to work, I repeat, ahead of schedule.
Further. To develop infrastructure in the regions, we have proposed a new tool – an infrastructure budget loan. It works well: this and next year, they will be used to carry out works worth at least 500 billion rubles.
A decision has already been made to extend this programme for 2024–2025, and additional funds amounting to 500 billion rubles have been allocated. However, this volume, I mean the volume of work, is certainly not enough. Many projects submitted by the regions have not received guaranteed funding, but they – many of them – are already ready for implementation, we can start here and now.
I ask the Government to increase infrastructure budget loans next year and allocate an additional 250 billion to develop transport, utilities and social infrastructure, as well as for housing and utilities modernisation programmes.
At the same time, I would like to highlight a few important points.
First. We have launched a programme for developing Far Eastern cities. We have already considered the plans for Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. At the beginning of next year, we will discuss plans for developing several more cities. Not all of their needs are financially secured yet. In this regard, I propose allocating a separate limit of 100 billion rubles from the additional 250 billion provided for projects to develop Far Eastern cities.
Second. The infrastructure budget loans worth 500 billion rubles, which I already mentioned, were distributed among the regions based on the population, and then the major, most developed and effective projects were selected. I propose an additional limit of 250 billion, which I just mentioned, to be provided also based on an open competition – this includes what I said about Far Eastern cities – based on the greatest social and economic effect. I ask the Government to hold such a competition at the very beginning of next year.
I also think it’s possible to expand the programme of infrastructure bonds. Here, the projects being implemented total 150 billion rubles. I propose doubling this amount in the near future.
Next: housing construction and improving people’s living conditions remains one of our unconditional priorities. Here, a special role is to be played by the growing mortgage market, including through programmes co-sponsored by the state.
Due to the current economic situation, the number of mortgages, including preferential programmes, has objectively decreased, so we have taken measures to adjust and stabilise this market. After mortgage interest rates spiked in March and April (to 12 percent), I issued instructions to reduce the preferential mortgage rate to 7 percent. This preferential mortgage programme expires on December 31. In this regard, I consider it necessary to take the following decisions.
First. As agreed, we will curtail preferential mortgages – we discussed this yesterday, colleagues – we will curtail the programme, but we will do it smoothly. Specifically, I mean we will extend the preferential mortgage programme throughout Russia until July 1, 2024, with a slightly higher interest rate of 8 percent.
Second. At the same time, we will expand access to the family mortgage programme, which is becoming our main tool now. At this stage, only families with children born in 2018 or later are entitle to mortgages under this programme. I propose making families with at least two children under 18 entitled to a 6 percent mortgage. This is a new proposal, please consider it as soon as possible and proceed with implementation.
Third. I propose a special solution for the new regions in southwestern Russia – the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics, the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions. I propose a preferential mortgage plan for people living in those new regions of the Russian Federation – 2 percent for new developments, that is, flats in new buildings. It is clear that new construction is nascent in the region right now, so this will be a tool to stimulate growth. True, the volume of housing construction is still limited there, but I believe, and my colleagues agree with this, that a preferential mortgage programme will pave the way for the long-term growth of construction in the new territories.
Next. Every house or flat, in every city and village across Russia, all industrial and social facilities must be reliably provided with heat and water.
We agreed to launch a major programme to start developing or repairing the public utilities infrastructure in 2023. The plan is to raise at least 4.5 trillion rubles for the programme over the next ten years. The government will contribute 30 billion rubles in 2023 and 100 billion rubles in 2024. However, according to the estimates, this amount is not enough to radically change the situation in the housing and utilities services system.
In this regard, I ask the Government, as well as the regions, to make it their priority to allocate infrastructure budget loans to resolve the problems in this area. I also propose discussing the allocation of additional resources for this purpose when drafting the budgets for the forthcoming periods.
The growth of the economy and business initiative, industrial and infrastructure opportunities, scientific and technological potential of Russia must create powerful social incentives. This kind of growth should result in a decrease in poverty and inequality, in closing the gap between the regions, and in an increase in the real incomes of citizens.
In this regard, colleagues, the next key task is, in fact, critical and cuts across many areas, it concentrates and integrates work everywhere else. Despite the objective difficulties this year, we will achieve positive results in reducing poverty, and next year we need to consolidate this positive trend.
We provide targeted support to the most vulnerable groups of people: pensioners, families with children, as well as those in a difficult life situation. Pensions grow annually at a rate higher than inflation. This year, as I have said, they were raised twice, including by an additional ten percent from June 1.
At the same time, the subsistence minimum was indexed for the second time this year, and many social benefits and payments are tied to it. They also increased accordingly, directly affecting the income of about 15 million people.
I want to stress that the key to increasing the material well-being of Russian families and their incomes is high rates of economic growth. This, of course, is the foundation of all foundations, together with new well-paid jobs, not only in large metropolitan areas and major cities, but also in small cities and towns.
Next year ensuring noticeable, tangible growth in real wages must be a priority task for the Government and the regions. The minimum wage is one of the most important indicators. This year it has been increased twice, by 8.6 percent and by 10 percent, and starting next year it will amount to more than 16,000 rubles a month.
It is necessary to further increase the minimum wage, doing it at a rate above inflation and average wage growth. People who work should not be poor, struggling to make ends meet. Working must provide them with a decent income. Of course, I am looking forward to hearing your suggestions, colleagues, on possible additional steps in this area.
Furthermore, protecting maternity and childhood, supporting families and saving the nation is an absolute, indisputable value for each of us, for the whole country. And this is also the sixth most important task for government bodies at all levels.
I would like to note that the so-called children’s budget – and the Finance Ministry has started working in this paradigm as well – is a good idea. The budget allocations for family support measures have increased many times over in the past few years. This is the fastest growing section of our chief financial document – the national budget.
Considering the overlapping negative demographic factors, the situation in this area remains complicated. Yes, we managed to overcome the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic and reduce the death rate, but the sharp decline in the birth rate has actually reduced these achievements to naught.
I would like to ask the Government to draft a special package of measures to overcome this trend. I realise this is not an easy task for many reasons, but it is necessary to work on it, to change the situation for the better and increase the birth rate and the average life span in Russia.
I will note that starting January 1, 2023, as you know, we will consolidate the maternity and child support system – we will launch a uniform monthly allowance for needy families with children from birth to 17 years. This benefit will be allocated based on one application from a parent or a pregnant woman and will be distributed as a single payment for all the children in the family at once. The size of the allowance will be increased to between a half or one subsistence minimum for the able-bodied population in the region of residence.
I will repeat that the processing and approval of this allowance must be easy to understand, simple and convenient for people, and, of course, provide real support for families.
I would also like to ask you to consider specific life situations. Suppose the income of a family changes because the salary has gone up a bit. In this case, the family loses its eligibility to receive the allowance on technical grounds even though its overall material status has not changed much at all. We need to provide a transitional period for these cases. I have already given instructions on this and am waiting for practical proposals from the Government in the near future.
On a separate note, I would like to briefly go over the healthcare system. Clearly, improvements in public health in previous years made it possible to avoid many negative scenarios from unfolding during the pandemic. I would like to once again thank the healthcare workers for their efforts. We were able to act quickly and make flexible decisions, and to concentrate our efforts and resources where they were most needed. We will continue to follow this approach going forward.
Notably, breakthroughs in the healthcare system can be achieved with innovative technology; we have discussed this many times. In this regard, I would like the Ministry of Healthcare to speed up the work on creating individual digital health profiles, to introduce AI and telemedicine technologies in order to improve the quality of medical care, the way it was implemented in Moscow – we discussed this recently as well – and in a number of other regions. Without a doubt, it is important to boost the motivation of healthcare professionals and to tie it to the patients’ condition and improvements in their condition, as well as to their own assessments of the outpatient clinic and hospital performance.
As you may be aware, a programme to upgrade primary care started last year. Outpatient clinics and rural health centres are where patients go first to get help, and they base their assessment of the healthcare system’s overall quality on their performance. I would like the leaders of the regions to monitor the progress of this programme. Importantly, an actual increase in the level of satisfaction with medical services rather than dry reports on events or renovations is the main criterion of success.
Primary care workers deal with an enormous workload, which is due to personnel shortages, among other things. During the pandemic, senior students and residents helped their colleagues out. I propose making this practice a rule and introducing positions of trainee doctors so that second-year residents could work as specialty doctors, primarily in primary care.
In addition, I propose introducing a permanent extra payment for primary care specialist doctors as of January 1, 2023. We have discussed this before. The amount of this payment will range from 4,500 to 18,500 rubles per month. Please note that it should be the same for each specific category of health workers regardless of the region.
Reinforcing primary care and building up human potential is extremely important for the prevention and early detection of illnesses and the prevention of risks of premature mortality. Patients with diabetes, for example, are the focus of special attention. There are over 5 million officially diagnosed patients in Russia, and the actual figure is, of course, higher. Since the disease often does not make itself felt, a person may not know they are sick.
We already have programmes to counter cardiovascular and oncological diseases and they are producing results. I am asking the Government to launch the same large-scale programme to combat diabetes next year. Ms Golikova knows this, and Mr Dedov talks a lot about this, writes papers, and he sent me the relevant ones. We must respond to this. This work must include early diagnosis of the disease, guaranteed provision of medical products, including consumables and medicines; and, of course, preventive work, that is, the entire range of measures that determine quality of life and life expectancy for people with diabetes.
It is also necessary to increase the volume and coverage of drug therapy for patients with hepatitis C. This will make it possible for people to return to a normal, full life, and in most cases make a full recovery. I am asking the Government to work out sources of funding for such a programme.
Another thing. A little less than two years ago, the Krug Dobra Foundation was launched in Russia. During this time, over 4,800 children suffering from severe rare diseases received its aid. The foundation pays for extremely expensive medicines for them, as well as expensive treatments, and helps to save lives.
Let me remind you that it all started with the purchase of medicines for children diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, and today the foundation already covers 59 diseases. The list of purchased drugs has almost tripled. Sliding joint prostheses and other medical products previously inaccessible to families are being purchased. Search and delivery of bone marrow for transplantation is underway, including from foreign donor bases.
In the near future, the age until which you can receive the foundation’s assistance will be raised – we have discussed this with my colleagues this morning – from 18 to 19 years. I am asking you to do this, to switch to financing further treatment using funds provided for adults for a year after reaching the age of majority, carefully, without any detriment to the patient.
We can say confidently that the foundation’s current powers guarantee that all children with serious illnesses can be treated. Its budget can cover this completely – I want to stress this –completely, and it is financed, let me remind you, by raising the tax on part of the income of people who earn more than five million rubles a year. By the way, I would like to address those who pay this tax: all the money is spent exactly as intended.
And I would like to draw the attention of the Government to the fact that the established indicators of the foundation’s activity and their fulfillment do not mean at all that in the future it will be possible to limit the financing of the foundation. On the contrary, it is necessary to develop and promote the areas of its work. There are resources for this, the Fund has significant amounts of money at its disposal. Earlier today we were counting with Ms Golikova and with the Minister of Finance: over 80 billion rubles will be raised by the end of this year.
I also believe it right to use these funds for the health of children, and for this I propose extending the fund’s mandate. It is necessary to provide for the possibility of paying for additional types and volumes of rehabilitative care for sick children at the expense of the foundation. I would like to stress that it is in excess of the volumes provided under the individual rehabilitation programme.
Children must be able not only to receive treatment, but also to undergo rehabilitation. In this regard, it is necessary to provide for the payment of expensive technical means of rehabilitation, as well as funds for the development of the musculoskeletal system.
In addition to this, the Krug Dobra Foundation will handle the purchase of medicines for children with other serious diseases that are not covered fully now by regional budgets. I am asking the Ministry of Health and Ms Golikova to regulate this.
Colleagues,
A person’s future success depends on good education and comprehensive development. It is necessary to create opportunities for this everywhere, in every region of our country.
We are building kindergartens and schools. By the end of next year, every child under 3 will have a place in a nursery. I will remind you that at the start of this project in 2018, we could only say this for 78 percent of children of this age. At least 1,300 schools will be built and over a million more places will be added between 2019 to 2024.
As I have said, we have launched a programme for major repairs on existing schools, and I will repeat that it is necessary to consider the opinions of the teachers, pupils and, of course, the parents in planning such renovations. They know better how everything should work in their own schools. They know what must be done for the educational space to become comfortable and modern and to motivate students for success in their studies.
I suggest that after 2024, when the main construction work is completed, we adopt a course towards regular upgrading of education spaces in schools and kindergartens. The aim is to introduce some basic guidelines – make major repairs on schedule, without reminders or orders, purchase educational equipment, and use modern technology and teaching methods.
And, of course, the schools in the Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions must have the same high standards for equipment in the classrooms, for textbooks, hot meals and for personnel and accessible hobby groups and sports sections.
It is very important to use the best, advanced methods in general education in Russia. We have many very strong schools. They have a leading status in world rankings and their students become winners, prize winners in international academic competitions.
I suggest – we talk about this all the time – multiplying the experience of such schools in our country. It makes sense to open similar leading schools in every federal district based on these successful schools. They will become flagships, a good example to follow by other schools and a source of best practices, methods and teachers. I propose building one such school in the new regions of the federation.
I know that projects like this are nearing completion in Nizhny Novgorod, Pskov, Ryazan, Belgorod and Veliky Novgorod. I would like to ask you to determine which regions these projects should be carried out in and choose a construction funding format. I would ask the Ministry of Education to coordinate this work.
Now, on to higher education. In the next decade, Russia plans to develop 25 world class university campuses with top-quality facilities for study and scientific research. More than a million square metres of new facilities will house laboratories and other premises, where more than 25,000 students and young scientists will study and create. These campuses should become centres of attraction for talented young people from all over the country, as well as science development centres and points of economic growth for the regions where these education institutions are located.
The first eight projects have already been launched in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Ufa, Kaliningrad, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Tomsk. And we certainly need to expedite this work, we need to do it faster. In 2025–2026, nine more campuses will be built in Samara, Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Khabarovsk, Perm, Arkhangelsk, Tyumen, Veliky Novgorod, Ivanovo, as well as on the Sirius federal territory. The respective decisions have been made. After that we will select eight more regions that qualify to host new university campuses.
The Culture national project includes a wonderful project to create model libraries. They have already become true cultural centres. Recently I had the opportunity to see this, via videoconference. They have become good models in small towns and rural areas. Given the great need for this initiative, I propose allocating additional annual funding for the development of the library network.
Let me also remind you that young people aged 14 to 22 can visit museums, theatres, and other cultural events free of charge with the Pushkin Card. This year, which has been declared the Year of Art and Cultural Heritage of the Peoples of Russia, the face value of the Pushkin Card has been increased to 5,000 rubles.
In addition, the Government was instructed to implement a new federal programme to modernise the infrastructure for children’s recreation and health improvement. I also discussed this with my colleagues this morning. We will launch it next year.
Colleagues,
All of the above tasks are of particular importance for every city and town and, without exaggeration, every person in our country wherever they may live. Solving these issues imposes stringent, even heightened, demands on public authorities of all levels. Specialists working in this field must set high standards for themselves and the results of their work and, of course, they must be open and receptive to the latest practices, approaches, technologies and methods of work.
I spoke about this at a recently held conference on artificial intelligence. I already mentioned this event, I hope you also took note. And now I would like to turn the attention of all my colleagues to the need to focus on improving the quality of public administration, switching to a big data-based governance model, including in healthcare, education, and housing and utilities, as was just mentioned. This is the key to the success of our common work, and the main condition for achieving national development goals.
In closing, I would like to mention yet another goal of paramount importance. I mean ensuring security and restoring peaceful life in the Luhansk and Donetsk republics, and the Zaporizhzhia and Kherson regions.
We will definitely reach our goal, and these regions will be one with the country in all key aspects of the economy, the social sphere, and governance. We have been down that road with Crimea and Sevastopol before and we know what we need to do.
In particular, nationwide social security standards will be introduced in the new regions. A maternity capital programme will be introduced and low-income families will receive payments from the state, pensions will increase, and so on. We will develop primary care and build kindergartens, nurseries and schools.
Within a span of several years, the standards of social support, healthcare, education, culture, and transport will be raised to the standard of neighbouring Russian regions.
To be sure, we will stimulate economic activity in the new territories and develop their industrial and agricultural potential. It is necessary to increase investment by orders of magnitude, to build new enterprises, including housing construction companies, and to improve the quality of roads and railways, as well as utility and energy infrastructure.
I would like the Government to put together, by the end of the first quarter of 2023, a special programme for the socioeconomic development of the new constituent entities of the Federation. All of them should be up to the nationwide standard that regulates the quality of infrastructure, social services and many other parameters that determine quality of life.
Please note that this comparatively distant timeline does not in any way mean that this work can be put off. It is important to immediately support the rapid development of the new constituent entities and to show results in each area every year. The relevant ministers and deputy prime ministers will be personally responsible for this.
Let us now get down to the agenda.
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Vladimir Putin: In conclusion, I would like to, first of all, thank everyone who worked hard to implement all the outlined plans.
Let me remind you that we all have worked quite hard to build and prepare them. All this was not done from light-mindedly, but based on calculations, development plans for various industries, and national development goals. This is planned, serious, extensive work, and the implementation of plans within it should guarantee the development of Russia in the most important areas in the economy, in the social sphere, in the field of the country’s defence capability, and so on.
We have only touched upon some issues that are, of course, of great importance for Russia. I hope that we will continue to work just as effectively. Although now even a superficial analysis of what is happening shows that, as they say in such cases, there is plenty to work on both at the federal centre and at the regional level. And you, colleagues, have just spoken about this in one way or another, and in one way or another touched upon problem areas that need special attention. I hope that it will be so.
And in the course of work, as we have just agreed, such proposals have now been voiced, in certain areas we will address these problematic issues on a regular working basis and, if necessary, we will adjust our actions. But on the whole, of course, everything must be done to ensure that the set goals are achieved and all our plans are implemented.
My watching and reporting on Russian state television news and talk shows might best be described as ‘random sampling.’ I do not spend my days seated before my computer monitor tuned to www.smotrim.ru broadcasts of Sixty Minutes or Evening with Vladimir Solovyov. After all, Sixty Minutes has both early afternoon and early evening broadcasts each weekday with different guests and breaking news subjects, while Solovyov’s shows Sunday through Thursday nights run for two hours beginning at 10 pm CET.
However, when I find something of unusual interest, which happens once every few days, I stick with it. Such was the case with Solovyov’s program last night and in this brief bulletin I will share with readers what impressed me most. The subjects I describe below are important for anyone following the rapid changes in global geopolitical alignments these days, yet they do not appear either in the Western major media or even in specialized commentary that circulates in the U.S. diplomatic and academic communities on daily digests to which I subscribe.
First, one of Russia’s leading orientalists and China specialists commented on the changes at the top of the Chinese Communist Party which appeared from the new line-up that Xi installed at the recent Party Congress. From the standpoint of Russian analysts, Xi has brought to the top a constellation of pro-Russian personalities who share his predilection for the Russian alliance, while removing known pro-American officials seen to be anti-Russian. What this means is that the long talked about plans to intensify Chinese-Russian economic cooperation will finally be implemented in the coming several years. In turn, that poses for the Russians the challenge to define where they want Chinese investments and technology to come in and how to manage the relationship in such a way that dependence on the West, which has just been terminated by the sanctions regime, is not replaced by dependence on the Chinese, which also would compromise Russian economic sovereignty. In the first order, we are likely to see heavy Chinese investment in improving the logistics infrastructure that supports the existing trade in hydrocarbons and other commodities. Additional railways and port facilities are at the top of the list. This is essential if the bilateral trade now pointed towards 200 billion dollars is to rise to a new plateau.
This same orientalist directed attention to another challenge that Russia’s government has yet to address if the closer relations with China are to be sustainable over the long term. He suggests taking a page from the American playbook. The Americans, he noted, have long practiced the cultivation of those they identify as future leaders of countries they want to bring into their sphere of influence. These prospective leaders are educated in the States and inculcated in American values. Russia, he insists, must do the same with those who are expected to be future leaders of China, all in the cause of Soft Power.
Another topic of particular interest on last night’s Solovyov show was the recently announced proposal of Turkish President Erdogan for the Turkish, Russian and Syrian leaders to sit together and define a modus vivendi, a path of cooperation in the region. The readiness of Erdogan to sit at a table with Bashar Assad was identified as a breakthrough, since he has been the last to recognize the legitimacy of the Assad regime. The prospects are that this change in the Turkish position will result in a joint position regulating the Kurdish question on their common frontier. This, in turn, will lead to the expulsion of all foreign troops from Syria. Those ‘foreign troops’ are, of course, the Americans, whom the Syrians yesterday accused of stealing more than 18 billion dollars worth of oil and agricultural commodities from the Syrian territories they illegally occupy. The realignment of Turkey with Syria is driven, in the view of Solovyov’s panelist, by the Americans’ military backing for Syrian Kurds. It was said to be noteworthy that Iran, which has been a principal backer of Assad during its long civil war, was not invited to the table by Erdogan, whereas Russia is invited. In short, if the Erdogan initiative moves ahead it will spell a major change in Middle Eastern politics and a significant loss of American Soft and Hard power in the region.
Amidst these new issues for discussion by the two different sets of panelists whom Solovyov presented on his show back-to-back, the war in Ukraine held its own thanks to some fiery statements by a retired high military officer who is now the head of the State Duma’s Committee on Defense. His opening remarks were sure to attract riveted attention: he called for the putting in place of plans to bomb London! Why not, he asked rhetorically, given that the British have spoken publicly about the possibility of bombing Moscow. Russia should destroy the military command infrastructure in and around London using either conventional or nuclear arms. Like others on the show, this panelist sees the war through the prism of armed conflict between Russia and NATO, where Ukraine is only the designated territory of combat. From this perspective it will indeed be a ‘long war’ that goes on for many years to come.
Otherwise, the number one Ukrainian topic of the evening was the unprecedented Ukrainian rocket and artillery attack the day before on the provincial capital of Donetsk, which received more than 150 incoming missiles, many from US-provided launchers. None of the blasts was directed against military targets; all struck residential buildings, markets, social infrastructure buildings at morning hours when there would be a maximum of people in the targeted structures or open spaces. Photos from the scene of destruction were put up on the screen and included images of the main cathedral of Donetsk, whose cupola was struck directly by one missile; this was held up as one more demonstration of the ‘satanic’ nature of the Kievan rulers, whose intent was clearly to traumatize the Donbas population.
There were more than a dozen deaths and a great many injured among the civilians from the latest Ukrainian barrage. The conclusion which Solovyov’s panelists reached from this reign of terror that has gone unreported by Western media is that it is high time to wreak destruction on the city of Kiev, not merely on its power generation, so as ‘to wipe the smile off the faces of the Ukrainian Nazi gang.’
Solovyov put up on the screen a video of Vladimir Putin’s televised speech earlier in the day pledging to bring the standard of government services in the Donbas, Kherson and Zaporozhye oblasts including pensions, salaries, available kindergartens and schools up to the level of neighboring provinces of the Russian Federation. One panelist remarked that this is all fine but is achievable only after the region, now legally RF territory, is properly secured against Ukrainian attacks. This was an unsubtle swipe at the President.
Iran also figured among the more interesting points in last night’s talk show. One panelist noted how Western intelligence experts are speculating that Russia is providing missile technology to Teheran under the terms of their new alliance. Nonsense, he commented. The Iranians have gotten substantial technical assistance from North Korea for development of their strike missiles. Thus, Iran today has serial production of excellent ballistic missiles with a 700 km range. It is expected that they will soon have intermediate range missiles under construction, and eventually will be building ICBMs with a 13,000 km striking distance, meaning capable of reaching the continental United States. These achievements are the result of North Korean assistance. What the Russians are now offering Iran is the technology to fabricate satellites, especially the electronics.
Meanwhile the Iran-Russia rapprochement is broadening out in new directions. Leading officials in Russian domestic security last week visited their counterparts in Teheran to lay down channels of consultation on maintaining domestic stability in the face of malicious intervention by the United States and its allies in support of Opposition demonstrations. The panelist remarked favorably on the executions in Iran of two anti-government demonstrators. As he noted, the latest hanging was of a young man who had brutally murdered an Iranian policeman charged with keeping the street marches under control.
One additional newsworthy item on the show’s agenda last night was the interpretation one panelist gave to the recent statement by former German chancellor Angela Merkel that from the beginning she had viewed the Minsk Accords as buying time for Ukraine to rebuild its armed forces after its 2014-15 military defeats in the Donbas. Many commentators, myself included, have explained this remark as self-justificatory in the context of ongoing vilification of Merkel in German media and political spheres for having been ‘soft’ on the Russians during her time in office. However, last night’s panelist said that Merkel’s political statements are never accidental or incidental, but are substantive. Her intention was to ride the current wave of thinking in German political circles by making negotiations with Russia impossible due to total breakdown in mutual trust. This is part and parcel of the ‘long war’ policy against Russia.
Otherwise, as is often the case in recent editions of the show, yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov was given over to philosophizing over the new identity Russia must adopt now that its love affair with the West is finally over. The debate is now no longer between Western-oriented Liberals and Conservatives. It is among Conservatives themselves, who have split between Nationalists and Centrists. On this show, the former tend to be represented by Duma members or LDPR party stalwarts and the latter by university deans and think tank presidents.
When leader of the LDPR party Vladimir Zhirinovsky was alive, he was frequently invited onto the Solovyov show and was given unlimited use of the microphone, never interrupted as was so often the practice suffered by other panelists. Now the nationalist positions of Zhirinovsky are advanced by others, including RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonian and by Duma member Andrey Lugovoy, best known in the West as the KGB operative wanted by the British police on suspicion of murdering Alexander Litvinenko, and by Solovyov himself. I have little doubt that in the weeks ahead we will see the recent prisoner exchange Viktor Bout on the Solovyov program given that he has just been inducted into the LDPR Party.
What all of these Nationalists have in common that sets them apart from the academicians in the Centrist group is strong leanings towards Soviet era mobilization of the whole population of Russia around national defense in the coming ‘long war’ with the USA and NATO. Solovyov himself repeatedly speaks of the need to establish ongoing military training of all able-bodied males so as to prepare a 3-million strong Russian army. As regards the economy, these Nationalists take a dim view of the market and seek state direction of industry.
The Economist has interviewed the three Ukrainian leaders who manage the war in Ukraine. It summarizes them in an interpretive writeup. I will use that to extract the important points.
Volodymyr Zelensky and his generals talk to The Economist (Paywalled)
The writeup is of course full of propaganda but one can still glean some information from it.
The first interview (transcript) was with Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s president, who is saying nothing new that would be of interest:
“People do not want to compromise on territory,” he says, warning that allowing the conflict to be “frozen” with any Ukrainian land in Russian hands would simply embolden Mr Putin. “And that is why it is very important…to go to our borders from 1991.”
Zelensky wants Crimea back. Good luck achieving that impossibility one might say.
The second interview is with General Valery Zaluzhny, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The third interview is with Colonel-General Oleksandr Syrsky, the head of Ukraine’s ground forces.
“All three men emphasised that the outcome of the war hinges on the next few months. They are convinced that Russia is readying another big offensive, to begin as soon as January.”
The author writes that “Ukraine enjoyed a triumphant autumn.” One wonders how many thousand Ukrainian soldiers have died for that triumph that was in reality a well controlled Russian retreat to shorten its frontlines.
“But neither General Zaluzhny nor General Syrsky sounds triumphant. One reason is the escalating air war. Russia has been pounding Ukraine’s power stations and grid with drones and missiles almost every week since October, causing long and frequent blackouts. Though Russia is running short of precision-guided missiles, in recent weeks it is thought to have offered Iran fighter jets and helicopters in exchange for thousands of drones and, perhaps, ballistic missiles.”
Yes, we have known since March 2 that Russia is running out of precision-guided missiles. It has since used only 4,500 of those.
“It seems to me we are on the edge,” warns General Zaluzhny. More big attacks could completely disable the grid. “That is when soldiers’ wives and children start freezing,” he says. “What kind of mood will the fighters be in? Without water, light and heat, can we talk about preparing reserves to keep fighting?”
When it is cold and dark morale indeed becomes a problem. It is not the only one.
