OREANDA-NEWS. November 25, 2011. Vladimir Putin’s comments regarding participants' speeches m
On musical preferences

Vladimir Putin: I like Russian music. It often played at home when I was younger. I also like light classical music, popular classical music and jazz.

On drinking problems

Vladimir Putin: There is one priest who I see from time to time. He has recently joined an agricultural project – well, not personally, but he supported farm production somewhere in the Moscow Region. I asked him, “Father, you built a church there first thing, didn’t you?” He said “No. I built a prison.”

Remark: Why?

Vladimir Putin: That was my question too, because I was taken aback. He said that they locked the drunks in there. At first, people were shocked, although it was not a real prison, but later they supported the idea. In reality, the alcohol abuse rate in the area decreased. Once people felt how much more effective they were when sober, they got different results, began to earn more, and the quality of their lives improved.

On roads

Vladimir Putin: About roads – you know that we have continued our federal support programme for road construction in the regions, including big regional cities. But we have also taken another, more important decision – mainly for rural areas and towns. Our decision was to make the regions spend 5% of their reinstated road funds for rural road construction projects and another 5% for roads in municipal centres. I very much expect that people will see a difference soon.

Remark: I can’t wait to see it. Thank you.

Vladimir Putin: These funds – resources – will be far greater than the financial assistance earlier provided by the federal government. We estimate the new funding at about 160 billion roubles, up from the previous 50 billion.

On sports development

Vladimir Putin: We will be working on two programmes. Mr Medvedev and I will make parallel, mutually complementing efforts. Sports development is a task on the national scale. Speaking of parallel efforts, I mean high-performance sports – supporting our Olympic athletes and national teams – and sports at the grassroots level.

Grassroots sports are certainly the responsibility of the Ministry of Sports and Youth Policy. They have drawn up a programme for developing sports facilities across Russia, which has the impressive support of the federal budget, not to mention the United Russia-sponsored programme that you are certainly familiar with – the 1,000 Sports and Fitness Centres programme that Boris Gryzlov often mentions. We have moved on to a similar programme to build swimming pools. Many football pitches have been built. It is a large and balanced programme. One of its key components is to support children’s and youth sports, to reinstate children’s and youth public training centres.