This was one of the points Dmitry Medvedev made in his address at the Modern State and Global Security International Conference.
Among the priorities the President named is that of states being responsible towards their citizens and towards each other. They must be effective in ensuring social and global security, and persistent too in their commitment to democratic values and progress and in their ability to develop mechanisms for productive cooperation and peaceful resolution of disputes.
Mr Medvedev called on countries to take responsible decisions over the coming months, including at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh at the end of September, in order to avoid a new and even more dramatic wave of economic upheaval.
The President said that the global economic crisis has overturned ideas trendy at the end of the twentieth century on the declining role of states in the globalisation era. It is not trans-national corporations or international organisations that are taking responsibility for the fate of millions of people at this difficult time. It is governments that are carrying out anti-crisis programmes and taking market stabilisation and social protection measures, and this is what is helping the global economy to return to normal.