2 july 2012

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev visits the construction site of a student centre of the Far Eastern Federal University on Russky Island

Participants:

Mr Medvedev visited the site with Aras Agalarov, president of Crocus International, the project's primary contractor. They took the lift to the sixth floor of the future student centre for a bird's-eye view of the campus. The prime minister enjoyed the view of the Eastern Bosporus Strait. "Simply beautiful! What a phenomenal view," he said.

The conversation then turned to water supply. Mr Agalarov said there were four desalinisation units on the island, each with independent pumping mechanisms. "I had numerous water samples from them for a month and took them to the local sanitary monitoring station, and never told the experts where the water was from. All samples were duly certified."

First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said that construction of a water pipe was put off until after the APEC meeting. This part of the project is estimated at 2.5 billion roubles and so is presently unaffordable.