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Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the winners of primaries in the ONF

Among them are farmers, veterans, and pensioners, doctors, soldiers, businessmen, people with disabilities

MOSCOW, September 15 (Itar-Tass) — On Wednesday, the leader of the All-Russia Popular Front (ONF), Prime Minister Vladimir Putin met with the winners of the preliminary national voting (primaries) in the ONF. Among them are farmers, veterans, and pensioners, doctors, soldiers, businessmen, people with disabilities. The prime minister spoke to the “war veterans” about the upcoming elections and ways of the country’s social and economic development.

Nearly half a hundred participants in the primaries who have shown the best results attended the meeting with Vladimir Putin, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes. Opening the discussion, the prime minister outlined both political and socio-economic topics of the conversation with the like-minded people that are the ONF active members. Putin guaranteed to all of them, and also the rest of the 4.7 thousand participants in the primaries, if not deputy seats, then their involvement in other work at the regional and federal levels.

Rossiiskaya Gazeta noted that the final lists will be formed at the United Russia party congress on September 23-24. There are 600 candidates on the preliminary list, at least a quarter of them are not in party members. Thus, the United Russia faction is facing a significant upgrade, the prime minister predicted: “We need people with new ideas about the current situation and the development prospects, about methods for solving today’s problems.” In response, the primaries participants shared their proposals with the ONF leader. For example, a public figure Valery Bazhenov proposed that the oligarchs should take their expensive watches and give them to Suvorov Military School cadets. To set an example, he gave Vladimir Putin an act of will for half of his apartment - the second half Bazhenov presents as a gift to President Dmitry Medvedev.

The prime minister did not agree with the calls to “rein in the TV screen” (all these series about bandits and robbers), and also the media that “do not glorify the working man,” Komsomolskaya Pravda writes. He sees the solution to these problems differently: “We have now developed a new system of financing the cinema - we try to distribute the money among those who have shown their worth. And the media are part of the society. And the society influences the media, and the media – the society. There is no tablets from an illness here. We need many-year work. Including by new members of the Duma,” the prime minister said.

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