Vladimir Putin's introductory remarks:
Ladies and gentlemen,
Exactly two years ago today, Kazan won the right to host the 27th Summer Universiade. The city won in a fair and close competition, in which the entire Russian nation took part.
‘Your entire country is supporting Kazan,' said Stefan Berg, the vice-president of the International University Sports Federation, after Russia presented its bid. He was right, perfectly right.
It is no exaggeration to describe the preparations for the 2013 World Student Games in Kazan as a national construction project, on a par with the preparations for the Sochi Olympics or the 2012 APEC summit in Vladivostok.
Let me recall that we expect to receive slightly more than five billion roubles from the government of the republic [of Tatarstan] for the entire project, as well as 26.5 billion roubles and concessionary loans from the federal government. But I will discuss all this later.
We are striving to ensure that that the World Student Games meet the very highest standards.
More than 13,500 athletes and official delegation members, roughly 1,500 members of the press and approximately 50,000 guests and fans will attend the Student Games.
More athletes will compete in the Universiade than in the Sochi Olympics.
Our country has hosted young athletes from the whole world in the past. This was almost forty years ago, in 1973. The Moscow Games left good memories in the history of World Student Games, mainly due to their excellent management. This tradition can and should be continued.
The World Student Games gain special significance on the eve of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Kazan will be a kind of testing ground for Sochi. Here we will perfect the system for coordinating various agencies and test the effectiveness of the mechanisms we have developed. And of course, we should make use of the experience we gain in Kazan in building sport facilities and infrastructure and resolving land issues.
I want to stress that the administrative agencies of the two projects - for the Sochi Olympics and the Kazan Games - cooperate closely and share the experience they have gained. This makes us confident that the Kazan Games will serve as a worthy prelude to the Sochi athletic festival in 2014.
I never doubt that good preparation for these ambitious events will help support the Russian bid to host the World Cup in 2018 or 2022. As you know, we have decided place bids to host the World Cup.
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Today we will discuss the preparations for the World Student Games, focusing on the construction of sport facilities and revamping roads and transport.
There are 64 sports venues on the official list of projects for the games.
Construction is proceeding at a good pace, on the whole, which is very important because Kazan must finish test competitions in all the sports on programme for the Universiade by July 2012.
This year the city will host Russian and European clay target shooting championships, as well as European student table tennis and beach volleyball championships. I would also like to add that eleven sport facilities have opened already.
Another 15 facilities will host their first athletes within the year. We have opened seven of them today. Now, we must focus on the most ambitious facilities in the Games, including the gymnastics and volleyball centre, a rowing canal and an aquatic sports centre.
A football stadium seating 45,000, whose foundation stone we have laid today, deserves special mention as the second-largest sports venue in Russia and a key site for the Games.
For the sake of comparison, Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow seats more than 84,000 and Dynamo Stadium, which was the second largest, seats slightly more than 35,000 and will seat forty thousand after its renovation.
Another project is the unprecedented Universiade Village, which will accommodate 11,000 and include a training stadium, two gyms, a healthcare centre, a dining complex and an information centre.
The first section of the village is scheduled to open on September 1 to accommodate students. The village is designed to have great potential for development. According to plans, it will later serve as student housing and a federal training centre for Russian national teams.
A programme to make use of the facilities after the games has already been prepared: the sports facilities will be transformed into a research and educational centre, most of which will be given to universities in Tatarstan, while some facilities will go to organisations that promote mass and youth sports.
The Universiade has been generously funded. The federal government has spent 21 billion roubles for the construction and renovation of sports facilities alone in 2009 and 2010. And we expect to provide another 5.5 billion roubles in 2011.
In addition, our efforts to attract private investment continue, and relevant changes have been made to Tatarstan law. All investment projects are organised based on the one-stop principle. Today I ask you to report to me the results of these measures in detail, and whether this experience can be emulated for the Sochi projects.
In addition, Russian Railways plans to connect the city of Kazan and Kazan International Airport. According to preliminary estimates, this will cost from four to six billion roubles.
Tattelecom is slated to lay a fibre-optic network, which will cost one half... even more than half a billion roubles.
Megafon plans to build base stations for the Universiade, at a cost of more than two billion roubles.
The grid company plans to build exterior power lines and so on. In general, this is a substantial list of services from private companies.
There is another major project that I propose we focus on today - transport infrastructure. The Universiade sports facilities will be located in four zones, and the logistics of transporting athletes and guests needs to be worked out.
Naturally, just as in Sochi, we must build a transport system that will take into account the future needs of a growing city, creating the most comfortable conditions for people's lives and labour, as well as a contemporary, urban environment in the fullest possible sense. As far as I know, a programme to modernise the network of streets in Kazan has already been developed. In 2009, the government issued a concessionary loan of 10 billion roubles from the federal budget. Some of these funds have already been invested in construction.
The Transport Ministry was tasked with preparing a plan for providing transport services during the Universiade, and I expect to hear how the work is going.
Let us get down to the discussion.
Vladimir Putin's closing remarks:
What would I like to say in closing for today's meeting? This is a hugely important project necessary for not only Kazan and Tatarstan but the entire country.
It is on such a scale that, as I said at the beginning, this project provides considerable, substantial support for the industry during the crisis. Nevertheless, this work is for the future. This project will provide the city with additional, modern, powerful, athletic and, most of all, transport infrastructure, all for a growing and rapidly developing city.
I must say that, on the whole, I am pleased by how the various levels of government - federal, regional and urban - are working together. It is this well organised cooperation that has yielded the concrete results that we all saw today.
In addition, there are problems that we need to focus on in order to keep up momentum, not lose any quality and conserve resources. Let me emphasise that - conserve resources.
We need to determine sources of funding and the responsibilities of the various levels of government - federal, republican and municipal.
When we started this process, and I remember this very well, Mr Shaimiyev told me that we would not need any money. But I did not doubt that we would need it. But although I did not doubt that, I nevertheless supported this project, keeping in mind its importance for Tatarstan and Russia. This is, of course, a good example for Russia that will help develop sports in Russia, including through federal agencies.
As I have already said, we need to work to come to an agreement on the requirements with international sports organisations - those requirement that they tacked on later. Now this has been said. I support the notion that these requirements should not be blown out of proportion. This could go on forever: strengthen this, triple that, multiply that by six, build something else here.
You and I must act within the framework of the plan that we approved with international sports organisations in advance. Since then, there have been no fundamental changes.
Nevertheless, of course we need to come to an agreement with them and certainly respect their opinions. As was proposed, we need to minimise our spending, keeping in mind the opportunity to organise joint operations, say, in transport, with the Sochi 2014 Olympics Organising Committee.
Let's talk about buses. Is this possible? Then we need to do it. We need to sort out public transport - trolleybuses, trams and so on. Since our federal agencies have this opportunity, we need to all agree in advance and do it. It must be made to look respectable, and so there is no need to be greedy.
We need to continue training our athletes. Construction projects are all well and good, but we need athletic results as well. Therefore, I'm counting on the sports organisers, in this case, the student sports organisers, to pay serious attention to this.
I ask you to continue working together just as you have been doing for the foreseeable future. Those plans, which include developing transport infrastructure, must be agreed on in the very near future, completed and submitted for approval.
On the whole, I'm honestly pleased with what I saw today and with how this has all been organised. I repeat - it's important to maintain momentum and not throw money around. Of course, Tatarstan must assume a great deal of the responsibility for this.
We are putting together the federal budget in such a way as to highlight the most important things. And I expect that the government of Tatarstan will keep in mind that this is one of the largest and most prestigious international sporting events to be held in Tatarstan. Above all, this will help Kazan to develop - everything that we're doing.
According to current law, many things are the direct responsibility of both the municipal and republican governments. And the federal government will, of course, do everything in its power to support the joint efforts of Kazan, Tatarstan and Russia to host a spectacular competition. Thank you very much for the great work.