Vladimir Putin met at the Kremlin with the winners of the Leaders of Russia national management competition, which took place on May 26–29 in Moscow on July 07 2022.

Leaders of Russia is a flagship programme in the presidential platform, Russia – Land of Opportunity, that aims to identify, develop and support promising leaders. The participants can apply for an education grant, work with a mentor from among leading businesspersons and state administrators and join the national management reserve.

In 2021–2022, the fourth Leaders of Russia competition, which has been taking place since 2017, offered eight tracks for the first time. These included Business and Industry, State Administration, Science, Healthcare, Culture, Information Technology, Students, and International Affairs. In all, 106 people from 32 Russian regions and three foreign states won the competition.

The speech transcript of the President is as follows :

President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear friends, colleagues,

I would like to congratulate you all on winning the prestigious Leaders of Russia competition. People like you do in fact tend to become leaders.

This year’s competition was very representative, with over 180,000 applications, and foreigners took part, as well. An impressive 10,000 applications were submitted from 150 countries. Winners from other countries can apply for Russian citizenship, the main prize, under a simplified procedure. We have promptly issued Russian passports to all 70 foreign finalists.

The competition is very interesting. You have displayed your best qualities and achieved a worthy victory because you waged an open competitive struggle. This is absolutely clear, and everyone understands this.

It is very good that we have created this wonderful platform that allows people to show their best qualities based on understandable criteria and to receive an opportunity for professional career growth, career growth in the best sense of the word.

As you know, over the years, the winners of this competition have achieved excellent results not only during selection but also subsequently in their practical work: they have become heads of Russia’s regions, mayors of cities with populations over a million, government ministers, deputy ministers, and CEOs of large companies; in any case, these people have entered the leading core, the managing ranks of our large national companies.

I hope that your mentors have also helped you. They are interesting people who have proven their competence in their areas effectively for many years.

I know that both your mentors and those next to them have kept an eye on you, and that several of you have already received job offers, which I am very happy about.

I would like to once again congratulate you on this. I know that the competition is being held in eight categories now, including ICT, state management, science, culture, and healthcare.

I will be happy to listen to you. If you have any ideas – and you probably do – we will try to consider them with our colleagues and implement them in our practical work.

And, of course, I wish you success and all the best. I strongly hope that you will use your best qualities to address the main tasks. And today the main task – and, in fact, this is always important – is to increase our sovereignty, especially in the latest technologies, and in public administration, which is extremely important, because without normal management, neither a company nor the state can function effectively. Therefore, I am sure that all this will benefit our country.

By the way, I know that several of you, perhaps even many, are volunteers: during the pandemic, you helped doctors respond to the virus, and now some of you are helping people from Donbass. I want to thank you for this: it is important, especially now, to show such composure and solidarity.

I congratulate you once again and wish you success.