From the Kremlin

Meeting with State Duma leaders and party faction heads

At the Kremlin, in the St Catherine Hall, the President met with the leaders of the State Duma and the heads of party factions in the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation.

The meeting was attended by State Duma deputy speakers Alexander Zhukov, Ivan Melnikov, Alexander Babakov, Alexei Gordeyev, Vladislav Davankov, Sholban Kara-ool, Anna Kuznetsova, Sergei Neverov, Pyotr Tolstoy, Boris Chernyshov and Irina Yarovaya; heads of political parties represented in the State Duma Vladimir Vasilyev (United Russia), Gennady Zyuganov (Communist Party of the Russian Federation), Sergei Mironov (A Just Russia – For Truth), Alexei Nechayev (New People), Leonid Slutsky (Liberal Democratic Party of Russia), as well as State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Anton Vaino and First Deputy Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Kiriyenko.

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President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues, Mr Volodin.

The State Duma’s spring session ended yesterday, July 6, and all deputies – I want to emphasise this – all parties made a significant contribution to the overall results.

I believe the results of your work were dignified, important and significant for the people, the entire Russian state and for protecting our national interests and ensuring the sovereign, sustainable and effective development of the country.

This Duma session was rich in events and intense work and was very important given the scale and complexity of the tasks at hand. After February 24, when the special military operation began, all the country’s branches and levels of government needed to act decisively, as a team and quickly.

Today, I want to thank you for working like that: in a collected and competent manner and at a fast pace. I believe all parties have confirmed their political viability and maturity and acted in a consolidated and cohesive manner like true statesmen and patriots of Russia, for whom inter-party disagreements fade into the background in difficult conditions. We have many parties, but one Motherland, and there is nothing more important and loftier than the fate of the Fatherland.

You have passed many resolutions and laws that significantly strengthen our system of social support and provide additional protection for our people. This was not just about the advanced indexation of pensions, which is important, an increase in the subsistence level and the minimum wage – all this was done without bureaucratic red tape and delays, in a clear and professional manner; but it was also about new measures on support for families with children, the extension and expansion of the mechanism for subsidised mortgage loans and additional guarantees for our heroic military personnel. There were also many other important decisions – I will not list all of them now since you know them as well and probably better than I do, because you created them yourselves.

I would like to acknowledge and thank every parliamentary party for the organised humanitarian support of the people of Donbass. I am talking about all parliamentary parties because the media has covered this work in different ways, but I know from my reports that all of you have been taking an active part in this.

I know that many deputies have taken an official holiday and gone to the zone of hostilities in order to provide help personally, often at the real risk of their lives. They went to help organise the distribution of food, medications, and basic necessities and quickly set up humanitarian aid centres. Some of your colleagues are still there, working as volunteers. This proactive, selfless effort is truly vital and greatly needed.

I would like to mention separately that given the rapidly changing situation, the State Duma, in cooperation with the Government, continuously upgraded a series of measures to support the backbone sectors of the Russian economy and working teams of companies, including small and medium-sized businesses, the IT-industry and other vital areas.

As a result, we have managed to preserve macroeconomic stability, which is crucial for the economy, to support employment, the normal rhythm of retail trade and economic life in the regions in general, the main transport and logistics chains, to expand the freedom of entrepreneurship, and enhance protection of businesses from excessive administrative pressure and unjustified criminal prosecution. I know that much still needs to be done in this respect but overall, we have done a good job.

In a short time, as soon as in early March, several packages of anti-sanction measures were introduced in close contact with the Government. Thanks to these packages, the consequences of the Western countries’ unfriendly and clearly hostile actions were minimised. Indeed, we understand and know this, we see that these illegal measures against Russia are clearly creating difficulties for us, but not as great as the initiators of this economic blitzkrieg against Russia were counting on.

Clearly, they tried to do more than just hit the Russian economy hard. Their goal was to sow discord and confusion in our society and to demoralise people. But here too, they failed since nothing came of it, and I am sure nothing ever will.

In this regard, the example of the Russian parliament as the highest representative body is quite telling. The policy of the parliament is based on the will of the people of Russia, our firm position and conviction that we are on the right side of history, on the unwavering resolve of the vast majority of the country’s citizens to uphold Russia’s sovereignty and to help our people in Donbass. This is what underlies the policy of our state in general.

The so-called collective West led by the United States has been extremely aggressive towards Russia for decades. Our proposals to create a system of equal security in Europe have been rejected. Initiatives for cooperation on the issue of missile defence were rejected. Warnings about the unacceptability of NATO expansion, especially at the expense of the former republics of the Soviet Union, were ignored. Even the idea of Russia’s possible integration into this North Atlantic alliance at the stage of our, as it seemed then, cloudless relations with NATO, apparently, seemed absurd to its members.

Why? Just because they do not need a country like Russia, that is why. That is why they supported terrorism and separatism in Russia, and internal destructive forces and a ‘fifth column’ in our country. All of them are still receiving unconditional support from the collective West.

We are being told, we hear some people say that we started the war in Donbass, in Ukraine. No, the war was unleashed by the collective West, which organised and supported the unconstitutional armed coup in Ukraine in 2014, and then encouraged and justified genocide against the people of Donbass. The collective West is the direct instigator and the culprit of what is happening today.

If the West wanted to provoke a conflict in order to move on to a new stage in the fight against Russia and a new stage in containing our country, we can say that it has succeeded to a certain extent. A war was unleashed, and the sanctions were imposed. Under normal circumstances, it would probably be difficult to accomplish this.

But here is what I would you like to make clear. They should have realised that they would lose from the very beginning of our special military operation, because this operation also means the beginning of a radical breakdown of the US-style world order. This is the beginning of the transition from liberal-globalist American egocentrism to a truly multipolar world based not on self-serving rules made up by someone for their own needs, behind which there is nothing but striving for hegemony, not on hypocritical double standards, but on international law and the genuine sovereignty of nations and civilisations, on their will to live their historical destiny, with their own values and traditions, and to align cooperation on the basis of democracy, justice and equality.

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