Dmitry Peskov. Photo: Egor Aleev / TASS
… – Dmitry Sergeevich, my first question is this: did we catch a cold in Africa in St. Petersburg? Still, the participants and guests from the African continent came to us in such light African clothes. And we had a warm environment, I mean the summit itself, but the weather was not very good. No one complained to the president that he had a cold.
– Nobody complained. On the contrary, everyone admired St. Petersburg, admired the level of organization of the summit, expressed gratitude and congratulated the president on this.
– And even then, and such a question, perhaps, it is already appropriate to ask. How did the president evaluate the work of the organizing committee, the governor Peter Beglov and Smolny in general? Yesterday they even held a football match with the participation of the participants, sorry for the tautology, where the Russian-African friendship won. How is all this evaluated?
– The president really appreciates the level of preparation for the summit itself. Because it did not consist only of a summit.
Many events took place on the sidelines of the summit and forum, both in sports and in the field of science and education, higher education and the media, which we talked about the day before.
That is, it was a very broad dialogue on a number of topics.
And everywhere we register great interest both from the Russian participants and from the participants from the African states in continuing the dialogue in various formats.
– The first Russia-Africa summit was held in Sochi in 2019, but then it was somehow postponed due to the pandemic. The second one is running now. And when can we expect the next one? Will there be any regularity?
– Regularity – yes. If you read carefully the statement that was published yesterday on the presidential website, as President Putin spoke yesterday in his statement to the media, it is agreed to hold such summits once every three years.
– Thank you so much.
– Please.