Adviser to the President of the Russian Federation, Deputy Chairman and Executive Secretary of the Organizing Committee for the preparation and support Russia’s Presidency at SCO in 2019-2020 and BRICS in 2020 Anton Kobyakov chaired an interdepartmental meeting on 24 July in Chelyabinsk.
The meeting discussed issues of city improvement, road construction and reconstruction, preparation of the summits’ venue, construction of a new airport complex, logistics and transportation.
Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Boris Dubrovsky spoke about the stages of the city’s preparation, which are divided into for local projects: the reconstruction of the airport and airfield Balandino; construction of accommodation venues for the leaders of states, members of delegations and personnel; designating events venues; shaping a new urban environment of the city of Chelyabinsk.
«Learning from the experience of other cities is of particular importance, and in this regard we closely cooperate with colleagues from Ufa, who participated in the preparation for 2015 summits. At the same time, together with the Union of Architects of Russia specialists we work on creating a unified architectural concept of the city centre, which will be implemented by 2020. As a part of the ‘Heritage’ regional programme we want to accumulate our own competencies in order to further transfer the practice of creating a modern and comfortable urban space to all districts of Chelyabinsk,» said Boris Dubrovsky.
«Without a doubt, Chelyabinsk will become the centre of political arena in 2020 through the SCO and BRICS summits. It is important to note that the 21 June 2018 meeting of the Organizing Committee and its protocol adopted by the Chairman of the Organizing Committee Yury Ushakov officially started the comprehensive preparation for hosting the events of the Russian Federation’s Presidency at SCO in 2019-2020 and BRICS in 2020. Laying the groundwork in Chelyabinsk has been going on for two and a half years now, but we must intensify all our efforts to ensure the high quality of the upcoming events,» emphasized Anton Kobyakov.
Deputy SCO Secretary General Vladimir Potapenko also attended the meeting. He spoke about the specifics of the upcoming SCO summit in Chelyabinsk: «This is the fifth SCO summit in the Russian Federation after Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg and Ufa. Our country is to host the first summit of the Organization with a completely different structure. Now there are eight member states in the SCO. This is a huge organization, which unites 42% of the world population. The SCO countries account for 23% of the world GDP; by 2025 this figure will reach almost 30%. It is an impressive figure to consider for all world leaders. We are all equal in SCO. Many want to join the organization. The Organization’s expansion process was launched in Ufa, and I would expect that it will continue during the Presidency of the Russian Federation».
More tasks and terms of their implementation were assigned following the meeting.
