Vasily Peskov, a journalist at Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper, Natural Resources Minister Yury Trutnyev, Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin and Larisa Brycheva, head of the Presidential State-Legal Directorate, took part in the meeting.
Mr Putin visited the Komsomolskaya Pravda editorial office on May 23, 2005, to congratulate the staff on their newspaper’s jubilee. At that time, during a conversation with the President, Mr Peskov raised the issue of forest conservation and state policy in this area and Mr Putin then proposed holding a more detailed discussion of the problems in this area at a later date.