President expects real results in road construction from Crimean leaders
KERCH. Sept 15 (Interfax) - Russian President Vladimir Putin urged Crimean leaders "to build roads rather than distribute the money [allocated] for road construction."
"The task is not to distribute the money but to build roads. That's where I'm coming from. You can distribute whatever you want and how much you want. But you need to understand how much a kilometer of road costs under these conditions, and based on that work out how many must be built," Putin said at a Thursday meeting of the State Council presidium, which focused on developing the transport system in southern Russia.
The president was thus responding to Crimean leader Sergei Aksyonov's reassurances that the funding allocated for road construction in Crimea will be distributed.
"Today, I believe, there is no threat in terms of proper distribution of road construction funding in the Republic of Crimea. We will implement all programs 100% by the end of the year," Aksyonov said towards the end of his speech at the meeting on the state of roads on the peninsula.
Putin recalled the arrangements to give Crimea an extra five billion rubles for road construction. "You had 13 billion. Nominally, it has become 18 [billion]. As the minister told me, you made the decision to steer this additional funding into repairing Tavrida's roads," the head of state said.
At the meeting, Putin suggested organizing regular passenger transportation services between Crimea and Sochi. "I am sure people would be using [such services]. People who come to Crimea would travel to Sochi to look at Olympic sites, while those holidaying in Sochi would go to see Crimean museums," Putin said.
The Crimean transport minister, Maxim Sokolov, who attended the meeting, told the president that there are no flights between Sochi and Simferopol and no cruise ship service between Sochi and Yalta.
Putin asked him to work through this issue and "do both next year."