Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues and friends. I’ve invited you here rather than to my office to discuss several issues in an informal setting.

First, I’d like to say a few words about the upcoming elections to the State Duma. Please, don’t talk about the presidential election yet. It is too early to get excited on this score because we still have another year until it takes place. Everyone should do his or her job, and that’s it.

Election campaigns for the Duma are already underway...

Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:

Vladimir Putin: Good afternoon, colleagues and friends. I’ve invited you here rather than to my office to discuss several issues in an informal setting.

First, I’d like to say a few words about the upcoming elections to the State Duma. Please, don’t talk about the presidential election yet. It is too early to get excited on this score because we still have another year until it takes place. Everyone should do his or her job, and that’s it.

Election campaigns for the Duma are already underway. Moreover, although the elections take place in December, as we all know we’ll have to make major decisions at our congress in September.

What are these decisions? First, we’ll have to endorse a list of candidates for Duma deputies, and second we must adopt the United Russia election programme. We must do this in September. What does this mean? Today is April 15 and there is a month and a half to go before June 1. Later on we’ll have summer vacations and holidays and in September we must meet and resolve issues. It goes without saying that we must work both in September and in the summer, but we understand that summer vacations change things. Therefore, we should plan our work properly and on schedule.

Now I’d like to comment on the gist of these issues. If United Russia wants to be competitive in the political struggle with other public organisations and political parties it should create a competitive atmosphere within its own ranks. We must make sure that our party conducts a free and open but objective and meaningful discussion of the urgent national issues for the benefit of our people.

We have covered a lot of ground in the last few years but we must do much more…

more to be posted soon...