EURUS Professor Piotr Dutkiewicz has spoken to Russian President Vladimir Putin when he met him for the 17th time at the Annual Meeting of the Valdai Club. Professor Dutkiewicz posed to the Russian leader a question regarding the future of youth in Russia in a time when youth around the world are becoming disheartened by the bleak prospects that await them in a world vastly different than the world their parents grew up in. Find the full transcript of Professor Dutkiewicz’s question and Vladimir Putin’s response below the video of the event.
Transcript of Question and Answer between Professor Dutkiewicz and Russian President, Vladimir Putin:
Piotr Dutkiewicz: Vladimir Vladimirovich, thank you very much for this unique opportunity to have a conversation with you.
You mentioned in your speech that it is up to young people to drive Russia’s future and its development. But all over the world, young people are very unhappy. What is happening in the United States, in France, in Israel and so on, they say that a door to the better future has been shut down on them. According to international opinion polls, more than half of young people believe that they going to live worse off than their parents. And that doesn’t impress them. Therefore, I want to ask you as the President of the Russian Federation, what can you advise, what can you offer the Russian youth?
Vladimir Putin: I already mentioned that in my opening remarks, albeit very briefly, but I want to reaffirm this thesis again. Of course, the future belongs to young people. And I reiterate that.
Secondly. Young people, as a rule, are dissatisfied not with what is happening, but dissatisfied with what they have accomplished so far and they want more. And that’s right and that’s what drives the progress. This is what helps young people to build a better future than ours. And there is nothing surprising and nothing new here. We know this well from Russian classical literature. Read “Fathers and Sons”, it’s all in there.
But what can we offer. We assume that we will provide more opportunities for professional growth, create more social lifts for young people. We are going to expand a toolkit for that, we will create conditions for people to get a good education, make a career, start families, and receive the necessary income for their young families.
We are developing more and more systemic measures to support young families. Even in a pandemic, I would like to note, most of our support measures were aimed at supporting families with children. But what are these families? Most of them are young people.
We are going to pursue this path forward, I think the greatest quality young people have is their audacity, striving forward, sometimes, even ignoring some formalities, that perhaps, constrain some older generations. And I hope that this energy will follow a constructive path, and that young people are going to take up the relay from the older generations and going to carry this torch forward strengthening Russia.