A Cry for Justice From Latvia: Russians Treated Like Second-Class Citizens, Putin Promises to Help
Now we'll go live to the country's most important construction site. and a marvelous construction site it is, too. Our correspondent Nikolai Dolgachev is working at the Kuban side of the Crimean Bridge. Our colleague is reporting live.
Moscow, greetings from the Krasnodar Region! This is where the transport passage over the Kerch Strait begins. This road leads to the Crimean Bridge. As many as 300,000 cars have passed here over the 3 weeks since its opening. The two regions are now reliably and conveniently connected. I'm in the Krasnodar Region, the Crimean coast is over there, we can see it thanks to the fine weather. The road leads to the right, and the bridge is over there. This year, Crimea has received more than one million tourists even before the summer season, which is primarily thanks to this road. This here is a key spot. It's the traffic police post to check the cars heading for the bridge. Not all of them, of course, only 5% of the stream of cars. We've already talked to the officers and drivers. Well, they can speak for themselves.
— How are you? Are there fewer or more cars?
— No incidents to report. The traffic is intensifying every day.
— Have you stopped an offender?
— Negative. It's a regular license check. We've checked it, and the driver is free to go.
— Hello!
— Good afternoon.
— Where are you going? What for?
— My wife and I moved to Kerch a year ago. Now we're benefiting from the newly opened Crimean Bridge. We're glad, I guess, like all the people living in Crimea and the Krasnodar Region. We were looking forward to its opening.
— Is that your child in the back seat?
— Yes, our son is traveling with us, of course. He's sleeping, we won't wake him then. We're now live in a phone-in with the President. You can ask your question if any.
— Oh... May I get out of the car then?
— Yes, of course.
— Good afternoon, Mr. Vladimir Vladimirovich! Unfortunately, not all the roads in our country are as good as the Crimean Bridge and the roads leading to it. But we'd like all of them to be of the same quality. In this context, I'd like to ask you whether additional funds will be set aside for building new roads and maintaining the existing ones. If it is, then what other equally ambitious large-scale projects are looming?
President Putin: Thank you for the question. Thank you for the question. The topic of road building is something that always comes up, and rightfully so. Our country is huge, and transportation issues are always pressing. But because of the vast size of our country, apparently, not enough has been done in some areas. That has always been the case.
Look, back in the 1960s there was a project to build a road to connect the Far East to the European part of Russia. The first attempts were made in the 1960s, then in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and both times they abandoned the project. We've built the first road, the Chita-Khabarovsk Highway, only recently. I just couldn't help but take it for a spin in a Lada Kalina. The vast size of the territory causes some of the problems.
But... One of our primary goals for the coming six years is spatial development and territorial interconnectivity, including road building. While the condition of the federal roads is more or less satisfactory, there are about half as many regional roads that are in a satisfactory condition. We must ensure good quality not only for federal, but also for regional highways. Their percent should be around 70-80%. The necessary resources are being allocated to this end. We spent about 5.1 trillion rubles ($80 billion) on road building in 2012-2017. We plan to almost double the sum in the coming six years. It makes about 9.5-9.7 trillion rubles ($154 billion) to be allocated to road building in various regions of the Russian Federation.
— Nikolai, thanks to you and your guest.