Russia Vs. Wokism: Declares 2024 Year of Family

Putin's Decree and other matters

This is what Russian policy would like to see as the norm.

As declared many times over the past two years by Wetsern and Russian officials, the West’s Russophobic Campaign’s aim is to cancel all things Russian and those manifestations are readily seen, the most overt example being the International Olympic Committee not allowing Russian athletes to compete or if they are allowed that no nation symbols are allowed; and now that Russia has declared its own international games, the IOC has forbidden all national Olympic Committees from participating. Then there’s the rewriting/falsification of history that’s rampant, and is not anything close to so-called Revisionist History since ALL history is revisionist. The destruction of monuments to Red Army achievements in defeating the Nazis. And then there’re the thousands if illegal sanctions levied by the West showing its utter disdain for International Law. Fortunately, despite their BigLie Media Megaphone, the West is a small minority of humanity, about 1/8th, and many within thar eighth self-identify as Russophiles. So, the actual number of rabid Russophobes on the planet amount to perhaps 200 Million out of 8 Billion humans or a very generous 1/40th of humanity.

In the postings provided to-date here at the Gymnasium, several have documented Russia’s policy of defending its honor and all things Russian. Several articles have focused on Russia’s emphasis on education and its People Centered Devlopment policy and philosophy. What Putin has decreed was mused about at several previous meetings with the government and has now been announced:

Decree on the Year of the Family

In order to popularize state policy in the field of and in order to protect the family and preserve traditional family values, I decree:

1. To hold the Year of the Family in the Russian Federation in 2024.

2. To the Government of the Russian Federation until December 27, 2023:

a) to form an organizing committee for the celebration of the Year of the Family in the Russian Federation and to approve its composition;

b) ensure the development and approval of the plan the main activities for the celebration of the Year of the Family in the Russian Federation;

c) determine the sources of financing of the main activities to celebrate the Year of the Family in the Russian Federation.

3. Assign Chairman of the Organizing Committee for the Russian Federation Year of the Family of the Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation Golikova T.A.

4. Recommend to the highest officials (heads of the highest executive bodies of the state To carry out the necessary measures within the framework of the Year of the Family held in the Russian Federation.

5. This Decree enters into force on the date of its signing.

Tatiana Alexeyevna Golikova is often featured in Putin’s meetings with government members as since 2018 she’s the Deputy PM for Social Policy, Labour, Health and Pension Provision. During Covid, she provided all the health related updates and is deeply involved with Putin’s healthcare and other social policy agendas. It’s not just the external political pressures that have prompted this decree, but Russia’s internal need to improve its demographic situation as discussed several times by Putin and is one of Russia’s National Projects. There are many government incentives in place to encourage Russians to have large families, large being 3+ children, and there’s plenty of opportunity for parents and their offspring within Russia’s booming economy, educational opportunities, and overall improvement of infrastructure that supports families—housing, transport, parks and recreation, sport promotion, and more. The government and private sector’s policy goal of increasing wages and poverty elimination also contributes. Controlling inflation and providing very enticing home mortgage rates while also getting people out of dilapidated housing are other policies aimed at promoting family growth. The program of home gasification that aims to modernize the traditional method of community heating during what’s rightly called the Heating Season is yet another aspect of this overall massive project. And of course, all this applies even more in the “new” territories where much rehabilitation has already occurred with more to come.

In the 22 November meeting with members of government, three interesting social aspects were discussed amongst other agenda items—nascent Russian Consumerism as a result of sanctions, internal Russian tourism and the expansion of Russia’s inland waterway systems to facilitate tourism and commerce. The development of Brand Russia is an interesting development and is being done in a uniquely Russian manner. The development of tourism within Russia within Russia’s historical context should also be seen as new as the days of internal passports and a great many closed cities no longer exists, although the overall territorial extent of the USSR was far greater than today’s Russia. Yes, a few cities remain closed in the sense that one must apply to visit, while the overall national policy is to get Russians to see their nation as it indeed has many fantastic natural splendors outside of the major cultural sites located in the major cities. You’ll note that as with a great many projects within Russia, tourism is a joint project promoted by the federal and regional governments along with private business, and part of that is the promotion of water-born tourism and commerce. And now the discussion:

Let's move on to our current questions. One of them is the support of Russian brands. Over the past year, a record number of new Russian brands have appeared, while the share of foreign brands is declining.

Maxim Gennadievich, how is this work going? What kind of support does the Government provide to our entrepreneurs?

Mikhail Reshetnikov: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, Dear colleagues!

Indeed, the Russian economy continues to grow. According to preliminary estimates of Rosstat, in the third quarter GDP growth is 5.5 percent in annual terms. In comparable prices, retail turnover grew by eleven percent over the same period, so this is an increase based on our domestic demand.

It is based on consumer activity, which is supported by growing production volumes. Our companies have accumulated enough competencies to replace the products of their Western colleagues and increase the production of their own products. And of course, in order to secure these vacant niches, they need to create, display and protect their own brands, which they do.

To date, Rospatent has registered only 860 thousand trademarks in the country. And as you noted, more than half of them belong to Russian companies and citizens, to be precise – 490 thousand. Moreover, over the past year and a half, the number of such signs that belong to our companies has grown by more than a third.

This year, out of the total number of applications received by Rospatent, 85 percent came from companies with Russian registration. The most actively registered brands are clothing and footwear, software, pharmaceuticals, household chemicals, perfumes and cosmetics, confectionery and bakery products.

At the same time, Rosaccreditation data confirms that the growth in the number of Russian trademarks is accompanied by an increase in their production in the country. This year, there are two thousand more Russian manufacturers who have certified goods that are subject to certification, which is an increase of 18 percent.

These are light industry products – the number of manufacturers has increased by 80 percent, goods for children and teenagers – by one and a half times, children's toys – by 20 percent, furniture-by 30 percent. These are the companies that did not apply for product certification before, but this year they came, and new manufacturers appeared. In other words, these are not only brands, because there can be brands, and sometimes they also use production in other countries, but it is also important that they are manufactured in Russia.

To maintain the positive dynamics, the Government has expanded the list of trademark support tools. Starting from this year, any citizen has the opportunity to register a trademark – before that, only companies and individual entrepreneurs could. Now we have self-employed people who supply products to marketplaces and use it very actively.

In less than five months from the beginning of the law, we have received five thousand applications from the self-employed, including Rospatent shortened the terms and the first 50 trademarks have already been registered. Registration has been going on for four months, so we are just waiting for a mass registration of those who have applied in the near future.

Cooperation of manufacturers in the regions will also play an increasingly important role in the development of the brand in Russia. For this purpose, at the initiative of the Federation Council – Valentina Matvienko personally oversees this issue – the regulation of regional brands was changed.

A new type of intellectual property – geographical indication-has been established by law. This allows producers of the same type of products in the region to unite and together promote the brand and protect the trademark.

For example, "Tula gingerbread", "Vologda lace", "Orenburg down shawl", "Krasnodar Tea", "Dymkovskaya toy". In total, Rospatent has already registered more than 320 regional brands. We have the leading regions here: Krasnodar Krai – 27 brands, Stavropol Krai – 14, Tula Region and Moscow Region – nine brands each.

What are our next goals for brand development?

First, it is very important for us to encourage companies to use a trademark as an economic asset, that is, to evaluate it, invest in it, and protect it.

To help companies, a new federal standard for intellectual property valuation and a new federal accounting standard were approved last year. Here I would like to thank my colleagues from the Ministry of Finance, who, despite all the variety of issues, pay such attention to these issues as well.

According to the tax service, at the end of 2022, the volume of intangible assets on the balance sheet of Russian companies, including trademarks, amounted to almost 15 trillion rubles. Last year's growth was 60 percent. Therefore, there is some share of this work.

The second point. We help Russian regional brands enter foreign markets. For this purpose, we have worked hard and joined international agreements, the Lisbon Agreement, and now we can register our regional brands in several jurisdictions with a single application.

Our first such application – for international registration-was received from the Gzhel association from the Moscow Region, which produces well-known products. Registration is currently underway with foreign patent offices, where all applications have been sent.

Separately, I would like to mention the role of the regions and the great demand for this work. Together with the Federation Council, we have developed recommendations for managing intellectual property rights in the regions. Agreements were signed with 14 of the most proactive companies. Rospatent trains their employees in the protection and commercialization of intellectual property rights.

And of course, a separate vector of work is identifying and promoting the best brands. We have many authorities working on this track: the Ministry of Industry and Trade-I will note here separately, Rospatent, the SME Corporation, the My Business network of centers.

On our platforms, we also promote courses in advertising, marketing, and brand registration. Starting next year, we will also include brands from new regions in the scope of this work. We also understand that this is a separate task for integration into a single space.

The initiative of our colleagues from the Agency for Strategic Initiatives deserves special attention and support. Since last year, our colleagues have been holding a competition for the best brands, identifying the most interesting and original, vivid stories. This, of course, gives a powerful boost to the whole story.

Therefore, Mr President, we will continue to keep this issue under control. Indeed, we consider regional brands as a way, including a long-term consolidation of Russian manufacturers in our market.

Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: Svetlana Vitalievna, Agency for Strategic Initiatives plans to hold a competition of Russian brands. What is this? How will this contest be organized? How will they compete with each other? What is it about?

S. Chupsheva: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, Dear colleagues!

Vladimir Vladimirovich, this year you visited the exhibition on the development of creative industries and the creative economy, and just met with representatives of companies of Russian brands that presented a fairly wide range of products, including high technologies, IT, food products, fashion clothing, jewelry, and children's toys. And then we also had the idea to hold a contest of Russian brands, and you supported this initiative.

This year, together with Roscongress and VEB.Russian FEDERATION for the first time, we held a competition of Russian brands to really see in which regions we have what strong teams we have, what areas are represented. Because we also discussed with you what market share has been released in our country today due to the fact that some foreign companies have left, some have remained. But these are huge opportunities today for our Russian entrepreneurs, for our Russian brands, to occupy a niche in the domestic market and, among other things, to compete and export their products to foreign markets.

We didn't even think about it, the contest turned out to be very popular. Despite the short duration of the application campaign, we received five thousand applications from all regions of the Russian Federation, we have more than a thousand, namely 1250 brands, companies were supported by the Agency for Strategic Initiatives, the organizers, as well as our partners. We have more than 40 partners. These are large companies, trading platforms, retail chains, development institutions, and our federal communication channels that have established their own prizes and support measures for our winners.

I want to say that the contest has become a new stage of development for our Russian brands. The average revenue growth in just ten months for the winners was more than 50 percent. There are companies that show revenue growth of more than 100 percent precisely from the moment of the contest and presenting them to a wide audience.

As I have already said, the competition has many partners, and it is very important, Mr President, that the participants and finalists of the competition did not talk about financial support measures, not even about the need for financial resources and credit resources, but about support in terms of advertising, communication, communicating information about quality to a wide range of potential consumers, about the quality of the competition, about advantages of the products of our Russian companies. And it is our partners who have supported a very broad advertising campaign: Channel One, Channel Rossiya, advertising agencies, and once again, retail chains that have given the winners and participants of the contest access to shelves in the regions of the Russian Federation.

Ozon and Wildberries gave our contest participants, Russian brands, an opportunity to be represented on online trading platforms. The participants also took part in the exhibition events of both Roscongress and the Russian Export Center, where their products were also widely presented.

It is very important that Russian brands are seen by tens of millions of our citizens. And, most importantly, you not only saw, but also tasted, bought products and products of our manufacturers. Only on one of the aggregators of online trade, more than 220 thousand entrepreneurs have sold Russian – made goods worth almost a trillion rubles (925 billion rubles) since the beginning of the year. I think these are very good indicators. Without exaggeration, the whole country has learned about Russian brands, and these are high-quality products, products that are used today not only by our consumers, but also our Russian brands are represented abroad.

Here is an example of the success story of our finalists. The finalist company, an ice cream manufacturer from Luhansk, has signed dozens of new contracts for its products after participating in the competition, and today these products are represented in more than 36 regions of the Russian Federation. Despite the end of the summer season, sales totaled more than 250 tons of ice cream.

The winners of the contest became the heroes of the project of the TV show "Our Everything" of the First Channel. This also added recognition to our Russian brands and ensured sales growth. For example, Beregi, an eco-friendly clothing brand from Kamchatka, has become an official partner of the World Youth Festival 2024. At the exhibition" Russia", this brand is also very popular.

The Russian manufacturer of liquid crystal displays Nex-T, a Russian company, received investment, and in October 2023, construction of the first Russian line of mass production of large-diagonal LCD matrices began at the Technopolis Moscow sites. And you also got acquainted with the products of this company at the exhibition and at a meeting with the winners and finalists.

One of the winners of the competition, PIX Robotics, a software developer for medium and large businesses, records sales growth of 300 percent based on the results of participation in the competition compared to last year. The creators of the VR Concept brand, a 3D visualization software, presented their solution in India and the United Arab Emirates. We have already found our first foreign partners.

I would also like to thank the Ministry of Digital Development for the opportunity to tell about the contest and its winners through the Gosuslugi portal. Traffic to our brand sites tripled, and so did interest and sales of our products and services.

As part of the regional trips of Presidential Aide Maxim Stanislavovich Oreshkin, we held more than a dozen meetings with brands from the Novgorod Region, Krasnoyarsk Territory, Perm Territory, Kuzbass and other regions. Representatives of the companies were able to talk about their products, talk about their business, and also talk about their plans for further development. These meetings allow us to adapt both federal and regional tools for supporting and promoting Russian brands.

VEB actively supports us, including in the regions.Russian Federation" and personally Chairman of the ASI Expert Council Igor Ivanovich Shuvalov. Together, we also gathered experts to discuss brand support measures in St. Petersburg and Vladivostok, and we plan to continue working together.

The region's umbrella brand programs are already being implemented in 47 regions, including "Sakhalin Quality Standard", "Products of the Caucasus", "Made in the Tula Region", and "Made in Kuban". The Moscow government is implementing a project to support local brands "Made in Moscow". To help regions use best practices, we have prepared recommendations for supporting and promoting local brands. In 20 regions, including the DPR and LPR, such programs have already been developed and launched this year. In total, such support programs currently exist in 48 regions. Next year, several dozen more regions are planning to develop such programs.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, this work will continue on your instructions, and tomorrow we will start accepting applications for the second competition of Russian brands, and we plan to sum up the results at the end of February.

In what areas will we select brands and can applications be submitted? As I have already said, these are consumer and food products, high-tech products, IT technologies, and creative industries.

The requirements for participants have not changed: These should be Russian small and medium-sized businesses that show revenue growth compared to the previous period. The criteria are not so complicated, and they make it possible for a wide range of our business representatives to participate.

As part of this project, we have also started working on developing a strategy for promoting Russian brands, and we would like to present it to you at a meeting with the winners of the new Russian brand competition.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

I wish success to all participants of the contest.

Maxim Gennadievich, we are starting the winter tourist season, the ski season, but the shortage of rooms remains, and quite large. This will certainly affect prices as well. What'll we do? What does the Government plan to do? It is clear that we have good large-scale programs to support domestic tourism, but nevertheless.

Mikhail Reshetnikov: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, Dear colleagues!

We really have a growing demand for domestic tourism. Our number of tourist trips in the first nine months of this year is almost 18 percent more than in the same period last year.

Moreover, the geography of trips is also expanding, and people are increasingly going to the North Caucasus, Altai, Lake Baikal, and Karelia. These regions have increased the number of tourist trips by one and a half times. The Far East and Kaliningrad – by a third.

At the same time, growth will continue in winter. We forecast 30 million tourist trips from November to March, which is seven percent more than last year. But we already had a very high season last year, so these are such good figures. And of course, in addition to our traditional leaders-large cities, the North Caucasus, the Altai, the Urals, Sakhalin, Kaliningrad, the Krasnoyarsk Territory, the Murmansk Region, and the Baikal territories will show the greatest increase in tourist traffic, which is where we are already seeing growth now.

At the same time, the tourism industry, transport, responsible services and departments are preparing to meet this increased demand for travel. I'll start with transport, and I'll definitely get to the hotels, too.

Of course, the key topic is transport accessibility. Together with our colleagues from the Ministry of Transport, we now compare transport schedules and tourist flows before each season and synchronize both, so that we have enough transportation capacity where people go.

At the moment, the seats on planes and trains offered for sale are generally enough to meet the growing demand of Russians for winter holidays. Our peak traffic will fall on New Year's dates, which is natural. Active ticket booking is already underway. Our colleagues are monitoring the situation and are ready to provide additional flights promptly if necessary. I think Vitaly Gennadievich will tell you about this in detail.

We pay special attention to price availability. We have a separate incident: once a month, we look at where and what is happening and why, what are the reasons. Of course, we have different dynamics in different areas. The Federal Antimonopoly Service ensures that there is no unjustified increase in ticket prices. Of course, it is important for us that the transport industry continues to respond flexibly to the growth in demand with this additional increase in supply, because in the summer we saw that the demand growth that we predicted was exceeded, and the transport companies worked well, quickly, provided additional flights, and we did not have any excesses.

The second important point is the points of attraction where to go in winter and during the New Year holidays. Our country's residents traditionally choose major cities: Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kazan, Nizhny Novgorod, and others, and in each of them we have dozens of events planned for all ages and for every taste. We took the holiday programs of all regions, looked at them, and they are really very powerful preparations.

But what is important? It is important that smaller cities also actively form their event programs and actively invite tourists. For example, the New Year's capital of 2024 is Suzdal. Suzdal is celebrating its millennium next year, and they have accordingly developed the entire program, all the festive celebrations, and attract people as much as possible.

We have a popular point of attraction for family holidays – this is Veliky Ustyug, which for a decade has been developing the brand patrimony of Santa Claus. Last year, with the support of the federation, an airport was opened there, and regular flights were launched there. Of course, the flow has grown. Plus, the railway there has done a lot to promote this direction. Since November, a special tourist train has been running from Moscow via Kostroma, and in January another one will be added, which means that our colleagues are also actively promoting it.

In the city of Shuya, Ivanovo region, the festival "Russian Christmas" is planned. A gastronomic festival will be held in Svetlogorsk, Kaliningrad region. Karelia holds a rally every year in January. To attract tourists, the Irkutsk region organizes a traditional festival of ice sculptures. In Buryatia, you can ride the largest ice rink in the world, they are actively developing Lake Baikal for this purpose, there are really great events there. The Nenets Autonomous Okrug invites everyone to cross-country snowmobile competitions. Of course, the southern regions are also active in the winter season, where Sochi Park is traditionally a point of attraction, the southern residence of Santa Claus.

Last week, together with the regions and federal agencies, including the supervisory authorities, we held a meeting on winter season readiness on behalf of the Government. Special attention was paid to the topic of security, especially at mass events. Here, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the regions have a well-developed experience of interaction in order to ensure public order at mass events. Our colleagues reported that they understand everything and are preparing for it.

For many, the winter season is associated with skiing holidays. Today, all our ski resorts have announced their readiness to receive tourists, and some of them have already opened: Vudyavr in the Murmansk region, Manzherok in the Altai, Sheregesh in Kuzbass. Resorts in the North Caucasus will open in early December. On Elbrus, the slopes are already being rolled.

This year, the share of resorts will account for almost 20 percent of winter tourist trips, but the potential, of course, is much greater, we understand this, so we are actively developing the infrastructure of ski resorts. This year, the routes will be increased by 27 kilometers, and next year they will be increased by another 50 kilometers-this is just the result of the support measures that we have deployed. In total, the length of trails in Russian resorts will increase to 470 kilometers, namely trails, certified lifts.

We also work with all the services on safety issues at ski resorts. These are, of course, medical care, navigation, weather conditions, avalanches. Rostechnadzor pays special attention to the readiness and technical condition of all cabins, lifts, and so on – this is extremely important.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, we also discussed a separate topic with the Ministry of Emergency Situations during the conference call: mountain climbing. We agreed that we will strengthen informing tourists about the need to register with the Ministry of Emergency Situations. We will conduct an additional information campaign.

The Ministry of Emergency Situations, we must pay tribute, made all these mechanisms very simple, but once again, taking this opportunity, I would like to urge everyone who goes to the mountains: you need to inform the Ministry of Emergency Situations so that they understand where you are and can provide emergency assistance if necessary. This is extremely important for us.

And what you started with, Mr President, is really a key issue-the availability of hotels. According to business estimates, by mid-November we have booked half as many places for public holidays as a year ago. In other words, we have people who plan ahead and book more actively. The demand is really high.

The most popular by the number of reservations is traditionally the Krasnodar Territory-ski resorts, Moscow, St. Petersburg. Hotel occupancy rates in major resorts such as Sheregesh, Arkhyz and Krasnaya Polyana are significantly higher than average, which means that there is a high demand.

The shortage of hotels against the background of increased demand affects prices. According to Rosstat, prices in the two-and three – star segments have increased by 8-11 percent since the beginning of the year, while premium prices have increased by four, five, and 14 percent. The main thing here is to increase the number of rooms. How are things going here?

Since the beginning of the year, 122,000 rooms have been included in the register of qualified hotels and rooms. This is an increase of 16 percent compared to last year. Of course, we understand that this is a way for businesses to get out of the shadows in many ways-tax conditions, restoring order, competition, and so on. However, according to Rosstat, 10 thousand new phone numbers were introduced in the first nine months of this year, despite the fact that for the whole of last year the figure was 11 thousand, that is, we have an increase of plus 40 percent. And this is also the result of the work of the national project that was launched two years ago, and we are already introducing the first hotels with the support of the national project.

At the same time, the program for creating modular hotels, which we launched in the spring of this year, introduced more than a thousand rooms. In general, the regions have committed to introduce three thousand phone numbers by the end of the year. In total, taking into account the 2022 program, they were also introduced this year, four thousand new rooms in comfortable modular hotels.

At the same time, according to your instructions, which you gave at the St. Petersburg forum, the Government has additionally found 10 billion rubles to support just modular hotels. And under this program, all the money has been brought to the regions, they are actively introducing it, bringing it to business, and so on. That is, Mr Putin, we are doing everything that we can do, everything that we have "rolled out" to the maximum.

Moreover, this week we will announce a new large competition to support the construction of stationary hotels for another 20 thousand rooms – this is what you also supported at the St. Petersburg forum. There are also ski resorts in our competition, and children's amusement parks. That is, here we go directly on all your instructions, we implement them rhythmically.

Of the small, but, it seems to me, important steps, what would I note? On your instructions and at the request of Kuzbass, we are simplifying access to snowmobiles with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Agriculture. We finally agreed that they can be operated on the basis of category A and B rights, but only if these snowmobiles are not used on public roads. You will be able to cross them, but of course you will not be able to move along them. We have submitted the relevant draft law, the final version – we are currently exchanging letters – to the Government, and we also hope that the Duma will support us as soon as possible, because people have been waiting for this draft law for a long time. Everyone who has used snowmobiles understands how necessary it is.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, in summary: the tourism industry is ready for the winter season. Regions, businesses, federal agencies, and supervisors know their areas of responsibility. We will monitor all issues on behalf of Dmitry Nikolaevich Chernyshenko, who regularly monitors the situation, as part of the work of the tourism headquarters.

Thanks for attention.

Vladimir Putin: Good.

Vitaly Gennadievich, is the transport building ready for this load?

Vladimir Savelyev: Thank you.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, Dear colleagues!

The Russian tourist market is actively developing, we have just heard about it. And our task as transport workers is to ensure the population's demand for transportation. I will report on the readiness of transport operations in winter.

In terms of air transportation for the upcoming autumn-winter season, airlines plan to transport more than 18 million passengers to 108 tourist destinations, which is almost seven percent more than in the same period of the previous autumn-winter season.

For 63 out of 108 tourist routes, the offers of air tickets by Russian airlines are equal to or exceed the offers of the autumn-winter season last year. The highest demand is recorded on the following routes: Kaliningrad, Murmansk-an increase of more than six times compared to last season; Novosibirsk, Gornoaltaysk-a five-fold increase; Yekaterinburg, Kazan-an increase of three and a half times.

Work is being carried out on an ongoing basis to expand air links with friendly foreign countries. Currently, as of November 1, 2023, 65 foreign airlines operate direct flights to Russia. In turn, 18 Russian passenger airlines operate direct scheduled flights to 24 countries.

In September of this year, an important event took place for our tourists: after a 30-year break, we resumed direct communication between Myanmar and Russia. The flight on the Yangon-Novosibirsk route was operated by Myanmar Airways. The company plans to expand the geography of flights to Russia.

Russian airlines are also working on the possibility of opening direct flights to the Philippines, as well as resuming direct flights to Indonesia.

As part of the preparation of the Federal Passenger Company for work in winter, it is planned to prepare about 13 thousand cars, which is 700 cars higher than last year's plan. During the New Year holidays, tickets for more than eight thousand trains are on sale. In addition, to meet demand, the Federal Passenger Company is working on the assignment of more than a thousand additional trains, which will make the volume of traffic comparable to last year's level.

In the current winter tourist season, passengers will be offered to use 12 traditionally popular tourist trains, such as" Winter Fairy Tale"," Greatness of the North"," Silver Route " and others.

In order to expand the route network and develop tourism, a new tourist train "Ski Arrow" will be assigned on the route Moscow – Cherkessk, which will connect the cities of the Southern Federal District and the ski resorts of the Caucasus. The train will run from December 30, 2023 to January 8, 2024.

The Lastochka electric train continues to run on the Sochi-Gagra route, which can comfortably reach the Republic of Abkhazia in three hours.

I will report separately on the communication with Crimea. The winter timetable includes nine Tavria trains, and additional trains from Simferopol to St. Petersburg and Moscow are scheduled for the New Year holidays. The volume of offers for New Year's transportation will be 168 thousand seats, which is comparable to the volume of offers last year. In winter, passenger transportation is carried out in the Black Sea basin on the lines between the seaports of Kavkaz and Kerch using four ferries.

In the Far Eastern basin, passenger transportation is carried out in the waters of the port of Vladivostok. Four ferries operate on the Vanino-Kholmsk line, three vessels-between the ports of Korsakov-Yuzhno-Kurilsk, one vessel-between Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky and Severo-Kurilsky.

For the first time, two water transport lines have started operating on electric vessels in Moscow, which will serve passengers and tourists even in winter – with icebreaking support.

The Unified Transport Directorate of the Ministry of Transport of Russia continues to develop a network of multimodal transportations using rail, air and road transport.

In the current winter season, resort clusters of the Elbrus region, Dombay and Sheregesh ski resorts are traditionally in demand.

Multimodal routes to the cities of the Baltic Sea coast, Kaliningrad region and excursion tourism to the Vladimir and Vologda regions, as well as to the Udmurt Republic are organized. Currently, work is underway to organize multimodal transportation to recreation areas of the Altai Territory, Irkutsk Region and the Republic of Dagestan.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, at the end of my report, I would like to thank Dmitry Chernyshenko and his colleagues from the Ministry of Economic Development, headed by Maxim Reshetnikov, for their joint work, with whom we regularly deal with the development of the tourism industry.

The transport complex, as before, is ready to perform the tasks assigned to it in winter and meet the demand of our citizens on domestic tourist trips.

I finished my report. Thanks for attention.

Vladimir Putin: Dmitry Nikolaevich, can you add something?

Dmitry Chernyshenko: Yes, thank you very much.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich,

Our colleagues-ministers have now reported on the readiness for the winter tourist season. I would also like to add that the national project "Tourism and Hospitality Industry", launched on your instructions just two years ago, is really working, and there are very powerful mechanisms there – soft loans, grant support for the construction of modular hotels, as the Minister just mentioned, co-financing of supporting infrastructure, investment projects with the participation of corporations " Tourism.Russian Federation", "Kavkaz. RF".

What do we see from the numbers? Our investment volume has almost tripled. If last year, according to Rosstat, investment in the tourism industry grew by about 37 percent, then this year we expect an excess, because only in the first half of the year we see an increase of 23 percent, that is, business invests funds there as never before. We don't see such growth in any other sector of the economy.

Separately, I would like to note the Government's work on organizing import substitution for the production of domestic equipment for ski resorts-taking into account all the sanctions restrictions, since we were cut off from imported equipment.

Here, on your behalf, we, together with Denis Manturov, investors, representatives of resorts, equipment manufacturers, consolidated the entire order from the tourism industry for all key types of equipment. To equip the main promising ski resorts that we are currently seeing, which are under construction or are being planned, we will need about 180 new large cable cars of various types, including, by the way, they will be needed for the urban transport network, not only for ski resorts.

As part of the tasks you set for import substitution and achieving technological sovereignty, our manufacturers are already covering a significant part of their needs, which is good news. This, by the way, also applies to snowmobiles – according to the industry, more than two hundred of them will be needed only for ski slopes. There are artificial snowmaking systems, snowmobiling and mountain rescue equipment, and, of course, equipment – all this is in the focus of attention.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade together with the Ministry of Economic Development continue to work on identifying needs and form an order for the industry to bring these products to the resorts.

Vladimir Vladimirovich, I would also like to inform you that the entire tourism potential of our regions is represented at VDNH as part of the Russia Exhibition and Forum. This is probably one of the most popular things that our subjects show in their pavilions.

At the same time, there is a separate pavilion "Feel Russia", which is completely dedicated to travel. A very interesting pavilion: it demonstrates the entire tourist potential of our country from Kaliningrad to Kamchatka. It is very popular – every tenth guest visits it. Key idea: to give visitors a part of the experience that they can feel as tourists when visiting a particular region of our country. The direction of ski holidays, of course, winter holidays are presented there separately.

In December, there will be a thematic week dedicated to tourism of the regions, namely the Greater Caucasus, where each of the subjects will introduce visitors to the tourist opportunities of recreation. At the exhibition, what is interesting, you can not only see, but also immediately get advice, choose a tourist ticket, plan your future trip, even pay for it there. Right from there, you can go on a trip.

What am I saying, Mr President? As part of the implementation of your assignment to create federal seaside resorts, which we call "Five Seas", which should provide an additional ten million year – round vacationers by 2030-you gave such an assignment, your meeting is being prepared, where governors and investors will present their projects to you and it will be possible to start implementing them.

I propose to hold such a meeting in December at the exhibition "Russia", just in the pavilion"Feel Russia". We discussed this possibility with Sergey Vladilenovich [Kiriyenko]. We would be grateful if this could be arranged.

Thank you. The report is over.

Vladimir Putin: Excellent.

The development of our own production in this multi-faceted area, of course, is the reverse side, in this case, the positive side, which is directly related to what they tried to "reward" us with – these sanctions. The fact that we and the Government are doing this is very good. We need to continue working to support our producers, who occupy the vacant niches. Very good.

You just mentioned water spaces. We, Vitaly Gennadyevich, still have reduced cargo traffic on inland waterways. What is the reason for this? A small reduction, in my opinion, five percent, but nevertheless.

Vladimir Savelyev: Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, Dear colleagues!

Inland water transport is a part of the Russian transport system, the balanced development of which is determined by the Transport Strategy of the Russian Federation until 2030 with a forecast until 2035.

As you see, the system is massive and would take many months to traverse on a pleasure trip.

Inland waterways located in the European part of Russia form the so-called unified deep-water system linking the White, Baltic, Caspian, Azov and Black Seas. The total length of the unified deep-water system is 6.5 thousand kilometers. In the first 10 months of this year, more than 100 million tons of cargo have already been transported by inland water transport. As you correctly noted, this is slightly less, by about five percent, than in 2022. A significant decrease in transportation volumes occurred due to the sanctions imposed by unfriendly countries, which restrict the sale of forest materials and their derivatives in foreign markets.

Since May 2023, restrictions on ship draught have been introduced on inland waterways in the Kama Basin due to natural anomalies: a low-snow winter and a decrease in the useful water inflow in the reservoirs of the Volga-Kama cascade of hydroelectric power plants to 60 percent of the norm. The joint efforts of Rosvodresursov of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment of the Russian Federation and Rosmorrechflot of the Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation established the operating modes of the Volga-Kama Cascade hydroelectric power stations, which allowed for navigation and an increase in cargo transportation volumes in 2023 compared to 2022. In the Volga basin, there is a four percent increase, and in the Kama basin there is an eight percent increase.

In accordance with the orders of the regions of the Arctic zone of Russia, Rosmorrechflot of the Ministry of Transport has ensured the delivery of cargo of the northern delivery in the navigation of 2023 along inland waterways in full. In fact, more than 1.6 million tons of cargo were delivered to consumers. Passenger traffic on inland waterways totaled more than 10 million people, showing an increase of almost 16 percent by 2022. Passenger traffic increased especially in the Volga basin-by 15 percent compared to the previous year, and in the Moscow Basin-by 11 percent compared to the previous year. On Lake Baikal in the navigation of 2023, passenger traffic totaled 390 thousand people, which is 12 percent more than in the navigation of 2022.

The main passenger traffic falls on the navigation period, which is 163 days on Lake Baikal. On the navigable routes of Lake Baikal, a guaranteed depth of the ship's passage is set at five meters.

According to the register of the Russian Classification Society, about 315 units of the fleet are registered. This is only on Lake Baikal. Three hybrid electric cruise ships are being built for Lake Baikal tours. Each vessel will carry out at least 18 cruises per navigation period of six to seven days.

At the same time, I have to note that cruise transportation in sufficient volume on Lake Baikal is currently limited. The reason is the poor technical condition of the mooring walls and their insufficient quantity. And in order to develop cruise shipping on Lake Baikal, the Republic of Buryatia and the Irkutsk Region should put the relevant infrastructure in proper condition.

To ensure the safety of navigation, track and navigation hydrographic works are carried out. This year, the volume of dredging operations was 100 percent completed and amounted to 20 million cubic meters. More than 80 dredgers were used for dredging operations in areas with a total length of more than 800 kilometers.

In order to develop transportation along the North – South international transport corridor and ensure the passage of vessels with a draft of 4.5 meters along the Volga-Caspian Sea Shipping Channel – its length, by the way, is 188 kilometers – the most extensive dredging works have been carried out in the entire history of this waterway. The volume of excavated soil reached a record value of more than 10 million cubic meters, which is twice as much as last year and three times more than in 2021.

There are 741 navigable hydraulic structures located on the inland waterways of the Russian Federation, which are designed to allow ships to pass through, provide design navigation levels, and provide engineering protection of territories. This year, construction and installation works for major repairs are being carried out at 24 infrastructure facilities of inland waterways and 87 vessels of the technical fleet.

For the first time in October this year, the Ministry of Transport of Russia created a special commission. Its goal is to develop high-speed intersubject passenger transportation along the inland waterways of the Russian Federation. The commission, which I headed, includes representatives of the Ministry of Transport, the Ministry of Economic Development, Rosmorrechflot, and the constituent entities of the Russian Federation that are engaged in and are located along this Volga basin.

Dear Vladimir Vladimirovich, the development of cargo and passenger transportation by inland waterways is currently of the most important strategic importance. And the instructions given by you on June 20 of this year following the results of the meeting on the development of river navigation, aimed at the development of cargo and passenger transportation along inland waterways, the development of infrastructure facilities for river ports and berths, are being implemented and will certainly be implemented.

Thank you for your attention. I finished my report.

Vladimir Putin: As for the Volga, a lot of work has been done there, but there is still a lot to be done. There are areas that require special attention, and please do not forget about this, all the plans that are there must be carried out.

As for Lake Baikal, I ask you to work it out with the regions of the Federation and report back separately. If you need to help them, then you should definitely support them.

Thank you.

We have been carrying out a reform of control and supervisory activities since 2019. The number of inspections has been reduced by five times, and this, of course, is also one of the areas of our work, especially in today's conditions, in order to create a good environment, a good atmosphere for our own national business, which could close the vacant niches. We have just discussed this, and the work is underway, and it is certainly positive.

Very interesting seeing a populace develop consumerism while trying to keep traditional family values, which poses the question regarding the West’s loss of values as everything became a marketable object. Of course, there’re many other inputs to the loss of values question. Given what we’re witnessing, Humanity has some ways to travel to reach the point where everyone’s priceless life is respected, promoted and allowed to develop to its fullest potential. I know the above is the policy of Russia, China and a growing number of nations that conspicuously excludes the West as it seeks to justify the Zionist Genocide of Palestinians.

Today within the Outlaw US Empire was once mandated as a family holiday based upon a false myth of solidarity between settlers and natives. Some aware of the false myth have ambivalent feelings about what’s called Thanksgiving Day, while the vast majority remain ignorant. I wonder how the declaration of the Year of the Family would be greeted within the Outlaw US Empire? My initial guess is with deep cynicism given the past 45 years of federal government policy.

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