Russia’s Prime Minister presented his report to the State Duma (Russia’s lower house of parliament) on the 2018 government performance, web page of the government reports. According to the PM, “The report always provides an opportunity to say how the country is moving forward, what challenges it faces, what goals it sets for itself and what it does to achieve them.”
As he said, “146.8 mio people live in our country, for whom and with whom we are doing all this. You know, time flies. At times, it’s difficult to track its course. The government had very little time to resolve a very difficult challenge to make Crimea peninsula part of Russia’s legal framework.”
According to the PM, “There is no need to explain that life in Russia today is far from the perfect picture we strive to achieve. It is difficult for many people; some of them are simply trying to survive. There are 19 mio poor people in Russia today. This means that 19 mio are not living as they should. The number of poor people has gone down: not like we would all like it to be, but still 400K less.”
As he noted, “Often people living in rural areas have to go dozens or even hundreds of kilometers to visit a doctor in a city or a district centre. Many people do not do this, because it is not possible. This means that the death rate in the villages is higher than in the cities.”