Meeting of the Council for Culture 2026-03-25 21:50:00 The Kremlin, Moscow The President chaired a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture via videoconference. The agenda covered a broad range of matters dealing with the film industry, literature, and ballet. President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Colleagues, friends, I am delighted to welcome the members of the Council for Culture meeting, as well as its guests. We are once again holding this meeting on Culture Worker’s Day, your professional holiday. I would like to begin by congratulating you and all Russian musicians, artists, writers, actors, museum and library workers, as well as people working in theatres and cultural clubs, and all the specialised educational institutions. The agenda for this meeting of the Council reflects the cultural landscape in its diversity. Among other things, we will be discussing matters dealing with cinema production and distribution. Much has been done in recent years to generate steady development momentum for our national film industry and enhance its competitiveness. At the same time, we must ensure that people, primarily the younger generation, discover the best films of the past, considering that our country’s film industry has built a long-standing record of success and achievement. Overall, we must educate children, teenagers and young people on a more system-wide basis about the way Russian art and our great masters influenced world culture at various stages of history. This is a very important element of the educational process. Moreover, I believe that the younger generation must not only learn about art but also be empowered to practise it by learning to paint, dance, and master music from a very young age. We have built an effective and impressive multi-tiered system in arts education in our country, which requires our constant support. At the previous meeting, we discussed infrastructure development in the cultural sector. In this connection, I would like to draw your attention to the fact that the regions of the Russian Federation must step up their efforts in this domain. I call for a more proactive approach to upgrading existing cultural institutions and building new ones, equipping them, and helping creatives and their associations by offering them preferential terms for leasing property and land. Those who work with young people must be the first to benefit from this kind of assistance. It is essential that we support those who write books, plays, screenplays, and poetry for children and young people, while remembering, of course, as a famous children’s classic aptly noted, that today’s children will form the nation of tomorrow. Overall, since 2026 has been designated the Year of Unity of the Peoples of Russia, we must pay more attention to literature and the book industry, especially in the regions, as well as authors and translators working in minority languages while remaining part of the single Russian literary landscape. I suggest that we get down to work and begin discussing our agenda. I give the floor to Vladimir Medinsky. <…>