Vladimir Putin's opening remarks:

Good afternoon,

Before moving to our agenda, I would like to wish you a happy Cosmonautics Day once again. I would like to congratulate all those who worked and continue working in the space industry, those who took the first steps, which are always the most difficult. I'd like to congratulate the veterans of our space industry and wish them all the best. Thank you for being here with us today.

Last year we widely celebrated a glorious date in the history of our country and the entire world: 50 years since the flight of Yury Gagarin. In honour of this event, the government has established 10 Gagarin awards and its first winners are present at our meeting. I'd like to congratulate you on these awards once again.

Now I'd like to say a few words about the substance of our meeting. I suggest that we focus on the problems of our ground-based infrastructure and discuss plans to upgrade the space centre in Plesetsk, along with tasks involved in the construction of the new Russian space centre Vostochny and cooperation with our Kazakh colleagues on the development of the legendary Baikonur.

In 2012, the federal budget allocated about 150 billion roubles for our space programmes, including more than 40.5 billion for space centres. The bulk of this money – about 30 billion roubles -- will be spent on the Vostochny space centre. Last year we embarked on the full-scale construction of this centre. We must build not only launching pads, but the entire most modern social and engineering infrastructure. In effect, we must build a completely new, comfortable modern city. Of course, we won't repeat what we did in the past when they cut costs on people at every turn. Regrettably, this glorious trend is still repeated every now and then. In this case, we will have to act in a completely different manner: we must resolve problems and create decent living conditions for people. This idea must become a priority during the construction of the new Russian space centre.

In all, we plan to build 42 dwellings and 30 social, cultural and communal facilities at the Vostochny space centre.

The construction of the centre will serve as a catalyst for the development of the entire Far Eastern Federal District. It will help us fully utilise the industrial potential of the Far East and Eastern Siberia and attract highly skilled personnel to these regions.

The first launch from the Vostochny Space Centre is due before 2015; its second stage will be completed by 2018, and the first manned flight should take place in 2018. I'd like to ask all departments and ministries concerned to ensure strict compliance with these schedules. Russia must have a national space centre that meets the highest international standards. The majority of launches in the interests of various industries and within the framework of international cooperation will take off from this centre.

At the same time I'd like to emphasise that only the existence of several space centres will guarantee Russia's complete independence in space exploration and will allow it to fully utilise the potentialities of space equipment. This is why we will continue paying so much attention to the modernisation of the existing space centres in Plesetsk and in Baikonur where, as I've already said, we will work with our Kazakh friends and colleagues. By 2013, we must create all the necessary conditions for the development testing of light and heavy Angara missile carriers.

I'd like to note in this context that Baikonur is one of the busiest space centres. It is first in the world in the number of annual launches. All in all, more than 1,500 space vehicles were launched from it during its 50-year history. In the last few years, Baikonur was also actively used for commercial space project with the first commercial launch made in 1995.

I believe we should develop this area of work and cooperate with the European Space Agency and with countries that are carrying out their own space programmes. There are more than 20 space centres in the world. New launch pads are under construction in China, Korea (the Republic of Korea), Indonesia and Brazil. The Guiana Space Centre is making rapid headway. The demand for space services is very high and I'm confident (and none of the experts here doubt this) that it will only grow further. We must elaborate a national strategy for the development of space centres in the long-term perspective. We should ensure a high return on the federal investment and effectively coordinate the construction and modernisation of space centres with other federal programmes and our plans for the relevant regions of the Russian Federation (the Eastern, Far Eastern Federal Districts and the Amur Region).

Let's get to work.