OREANDA-NEWS. April 26, 2012. Live interview with Dmitry Medvedev to Russian television networks Channel One, Rossiya, NTV, Dozhd and REN TV.

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MARIANNA MAKSIMOVSKAYA (REN TV): Good afternoon,

Mr President, thank you for the opportunity to conduct this live interview, which will be the last one of your presidential term. We hope everyone will find it interesting.

PRESIDENT OF RUSSIA DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Good afternoon, and thank you. I would like to welcome all of you and all our viewers.

Let's get started.

MARIANNA MAKSIMOVSKAYA: Mr President, you have been using absolutely liberal vocabulary during your entire term as president. You said that ‘freedom is better than no freedom’ and your Go Russia! article amounted to a liberal manifesto.

I want to ask you about your work. Have you accomplished what you wanted? Do you think Russia has become a more liberal country during your presidency?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Freedom is such a unique feeling that each person understands it in his own way. Of course, freedom also has some objective aspects but generally speaking it is based on our feelings. I have once said in a speech that we are only free if we can say about ourselves: I am free.

Let's look at what has happened in the past few years. I think we have made real progress in expanding civil liberties. Yes, someone may believe this movement is too timid, while others believe it has become inordinate, they say ‘we shouldn’t go so far, everything was all right before’. But, in my opinion, we have made substantial progress. I will not make comparisons to the early years [of modern Russian history], but will just refer to some events of the past few months.

Let’s ask the people who participated in the recent political rallies if they are free of not. No matter who they support, the right, the left or the centre, I am absolutely confident that the vast majority of them will say, ‘Yes, I am free because I am here, I have my views, I do not like many things, or, maybe the other way around, I like almost everything, and you can’t take that away from me. But I am free’. Freedom is the way people perceive themselves, and in this sense, we have accomplished a great deal.

ALEXEI PIVOVAROV (NTV): If I may, Mr President, I would like to steer this philosophical question towards the economy. The economic slogan of your presidency has been Modernisation and Competitiveness, as we all remember. Are you happy with the way these slogans have materialised? I can even narrow down the issue: during your presidency has Russia become more or less dependent on hydrocarbons?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Yes, this is a very important issue for us because one of the major risks usually mentioned in connection with Russia is our dependence on hydrocarbons. If we look at different assessments, two major risks are usually identified: demography and an excessive dependence on the export of raw materials.

To be honest, I am not entirely satisfied with what we have achieved over the years. I did not have any illusions that within four years we would give up the export of oil and gas, and it would not have been a good thing. Just because we are a country with the biggest reserves of raw materials and we supply a huge number of countries with hydrocarbons. However, we needed to diversify our economy. On the whole, we have been making progress at a reasonable rate.

I can tell you that over the past four years, the production of industrial and capital goods, and production in the main industries have grown by about 50%. The production of radio-electronics has grown by 30%. That’s a good result. However, if we talk about our export balance, hydrocarbons still make up 70% of our exports and only 5% is the sales of equipment. Therefore, the diversification efforts should continue. In fact, that is the focus of our economic modernisation programme.

Let me remind you that the programme contains five elements: the space, IT, the nuclear industry, and many other very important areas, including the production of pharmaceuticals. If we can move forward in modernising these five key sectors and a few others, we will be able to achieve economic diversification.

If we talk about macroeconomics, we can see that the current situation contributes to it because we have the smallest inflation in the entire 20-year history of our country. Last year it was 6%, and over the past 12 months it was 4%. We have a very good correlation between debt and gross domestic product, almost the lowest among all developed countries: about 10%.

Under such macroeconomic conditions, we can diversify our economy. I have absolutely no doubt about it. This is a challenge for the coming years, and a task for the new Government.

ANTON VERNITSKY (CHANNEL ONE): I would like to ask about the reforms.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: Go ahead.

ANTON VERNITSKY: The former militia became the police during your presidency. The form is new but the content has remained the same, even though the personnel has undergone unscheduled attestations. The whole country has heard of the sadists from the Dalny police station. Similar reports about the beating of detainees are made almost every day. Yesterday a similar report came from Volgograd. Perhaps the time has come to reform the police as well?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: You know, I think no one should expect that we will have a brand new police force or a new Interior Ministry agency six months after administrative changes are introduced because the police has a new name but the people working there are still the same.

Yes, some police officers – a considerable part, in fact – did not pass the attestation. 200,000 people were dismissed from the Interior Ministry agencies. However, that does not mean that everyone else instantly became different. This is the first point.

Second, we must not judge the overall level of the legal system, of law and order by the actions of individual scoundrels. Their actions have been given a principled assessment. In all such cases, criminal cases are opened and the law enforcement officers are taken into custody. This is the way it also happens in other countries.

We are currently at the very outset of the process. It’s not an easy task. We’re not a tiny country, like the one people sometimes hold up as a model and say: “Let’s just get rid of everyone and hire new police officers.” Would you join the police force?

ANNA SCHNEIDER (RTR): Do you mean Georgia?

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I don’t mean anything. That’s what you said.

I’m saying that we’re not a small country where you could do something like that. We’re a big country. We have nearly two million police officers, together with the civilian staff. That is a huge army. It takes a large number of people working for a single federal agency to ensure law and order across the entire territory of the federal state. These people cannot be changed by issuing orders. They need to be educated. And I think it is a very positive trend that all such cases are becoming public and transparent.

After all, let’s be honest, such problems have existed before but nobody knew about them. Why not? First, society had a more detached attitude to them, and second, the communication means we have today did not exist. Now, everybody knows about every case of misconduct, not to mention a crime. That’s good. Potential offenders will be afraid, and those who have committed offences will go to prison.

ANNA SCHNEIDER: Could we continue with the theme of going to prison? I would like to ask about the personal liability of officials. Take Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev. What is his personal responsibility for the Interior Ministry reform and the incidents at specific police stations? What is your response to the demands to dismiss Minister Nurgaliyev?

Rashid Nurgaliyev is just as an example because there is a feeling that when we have a major emergency, a terrorist attack or an industrial accident, it is always the low- to medium- ranking officials who get the blame but never the top officials.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: I cannot completely agree with this because in many cases when crimes were committed the people who bore the responsibility were at the level of Deputy Minister, and in some cases even higher.

As for the Interior Minister, he takes full responsibility for the situation within the Ministry, and he understands this. He is also responsible for the implementation of the reform, just as I am responsible as the President and Commander-in-Chief.

Furthermore, the ministers’ fate is clear: on May 7, all the ministers will submit their resignations. That’s all there is to it.

ANNA SCHNEIDER: But a resignation is not the same as a criminal investigation. Is resignation the most severe punishment possible?

ALEXEI PIVOVAROV: And don’t forget this is a planned resignation.

ANNA SCHNEIDER: Yes, especially a planned resignation.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV: True, it is a planned event. Let me tell you this. If we dismiss a minister for every single incident, we will never be able to put together a strong team because we all understand the conditions in the country, the problems of our political system, the economic situation. Therefore, if we dismiss a minister for every case of misconduct, the system will collapse.