Live on Channel One, Russia 1 and Russia 24 and on radio stations Mayak, Vesti FM and Radio Russia, the special program "Direct Line with Vladimir Putin" aired.
As part of the program the president answered more than 85 questions from Russians on the most pressing social and political issues.
The total duration of the program was 4 hours and 47 minutes.
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K. KLEYMYENOV: Thank you, Novosibirsk.
We also have, by the way, our own innovation city in Moscow, Skolkovo, although recently news associated with financial scandals, not innovation, has emerged. The latest has risen around Skolkovo lecturer Ilya Ponomarev, a deputy who delivered ten lectures for $300,000 dollars.
Vladimir Vladimirovich, there are a lot of scandals. I’d like to hear your opinion. Do you believe in the future of this project at all?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: I believe. But what did it all begin from? Some time ago I initiated two projects: one in Moscow and one in St. Petersburg. Skolkovo, and the second, not far from downton on the coast of the Gulf of Finland. We gave this center over to the Petersburg State University (the patron of this project was Sergei Ivanov), and Skolkovo involved Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev from the very first steps.
We came to the conclusion that Skolkovo should focus on private investment. If the first project was given to a university, it was still patronized by the state and is gradually developing, slowly. Hopefully it will also be fully realized.
Initially, both were designed as business schools. Later, three or four years ago, the project began to transform into an innovation center. I think it's a good idea, the only question is that other participants in the innovation process, including our recognized science cities, such as Dubna, and others too, don’t feel like poor relatives, and you cannot create exclusive conditions for only one participant of this process. And the project itself, in my opinion, deserves support, but that does not mean that someone is lucky, like on the Olympic project, to be outside the scope of existing laws. This does not mean that you can break the law – it means that controls will be strictly enforced, including here. And if someone received money for unclear reasons, I don’t know if they were a citizen when they received the money, if they had higher education or not, but if, as law enforcement officers say, no lectures were actually delivered and the works were compilations of material from the internet, cheap works not worth three pennies, then we have to deal with it. Incidentally, I’m not confirming this, it's just that it’s necessary for the relevant authorities to give a legal assessment according to the law: then you need to do something about it. What if it’s not the case? I do not know. Then well done, let him continue to lecture. But I do not know if they are worth $650,000 dollars, I do not know.
M. SITTEL: Continuing the theme of Skolkovo, Vladimir Vladimirovich, two text messages: "Why does the state not target specific problems to solve when investing such money in Skolkovo?" And they also write: "When are they going to steal all the money from Skolkovo?"
VLADIMIR PUTIN: You probably know that this project is not under my direct control, but I think the project will be respected the same as all other projects of this kind, as I’ve just said. And we will carefully monitor how the money is spent, where it’s going and for what purposes. And I am sure that nobody will allow any theft.
And the first part of the question was?
M. SITTEL: Why doesn’t the state put specific objectives while investing?
VLADIMIR PUTIN: As for specific tasks, it is necessary to ask the Ministry of Education and Science first of all. Here in this project, as far as I understand, the method of management is not setting specific objectives to achieve results, but creating precisely the conditions necessary for people with different projects to produce results from their work. That's more or less what Valery Ivanovich said, about the need to develop the infrastructure for science; this is one of the attempts to create elements of this infrastructure. To what degree it works out or not, that is another question.
Source: kremlin.ru