NOVO-OGAREVO, March 14. /TASS/. The country has grown into implementation of such a large-scale project as the Moscow - St. Petersburg express railroad, Russian President Vladimir Putin said.

The project of high speed railroad construction has been discussed "for a very long time so far," the head of state said at the ceremony of railroad construction start and first concrete pouring to the basement of the seventh power generating unit of the Leningradskaya nuclear plant. "But now we have indeed grown in terms of finance, in the economic sense, in the technological [one] into implementation of this large-scale yet needy project for our economy," the head of state said.

The express railroad project was discussed in mid-February at a special meeting he had held when visiting the Sverdlovsk Region, Putin noted. "It’s time to move to practical implementation," he added.