MOSCOW, December 19. /TASS/. Russia will have to respond to new historical challenges by preserving the nation, creating a new economy and ensuring technological breakthroughs in medicine and education, President Vladimir Putin said addressing the Actions Forum of the All-Russia People's Front.
"We must give appropriate responses to the crucial historical challenges by preserving our nation and ensuring its growth, creating a new economy, developing the Arctic region, the Far East and Siberia, as well as all the other regions of our large country," he said. According to Putin, one of the future challenges concerns "an actual breakthrough in medical technologies, as well as in technologies in the broadest sense of the word, and in the education field," Putin added.
According to him, there is a need to do much in order to ensure the people’s welfare, eradicate poverty and overcome social inequality as those issues are pressing at the moment. Putin added that Russia had every opportunity to regain a leading position in the fields where it had always been a leader.
"We will surely achieve breakthroughs we need to build new development competencies. Without a doubt, we should be leaders in the fields of knowledge, social and cultural development, while preserving our identity and looking back to our best traditions. It will take years to fulfill these tasks but we have no right to stumble and lose the direction we chose, otherwise we will have to start everything almost from a clean slate," Putin stressed.