The President decided to set up the working group after visiting the Armoury, which is part of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, and talking with the museums’ director, Yelena Gagarina, on June 29, 2012.
Ms Gagarina explained during the conversation that only a small part of the Armoury’s collection is actually on display. The Kremlin museums have more than 160,000 items in their collections, but most of them are never seen by the public for lack of exhibition space (currently no more than 2,300 square metres).
Mr Putin proposed looking into the possibility of giving the Moscow Kremlin museums the use of the reconstructed Middle Trading Rows building at No.5 Red Square, which has more than 40,000 square metres of space.