President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Mr Krasnov, we maintain constant contact and quite often discuss current and potential issues, specific cases, and the work of public prosecution service in general. Still, we have agreed to meet in person.
What shall we start with?
Prosecutor General Igor Krasnov: Good afternoon, Mr President.
Allow me to report on today’s most significant areas of work for the prosecution service.
The special military operation, the partial mobilisation and the incorporation of the new territories have brought significant changes to the prosecutor’s supervision. One of the priorities is overseeing compliance with the law in the Armed Forces and the Russian defence industry.
We continue to deal with issues concerning the provision of mobilised personnel with bulletproof vests and other gear. The majority of problems have been resolved. We currently monitor the supply of winter uniforms to the mobilised personnel, creating and ensuring the protection of respective storage facilities.
Thanks to the agency’s efforts, more than 9,000 citizens mobilised in violation of the law have been released from service, including those whose health is incompatible with military service.
Mr President, considering that it was the first mobilisation in a very long time, a host of serious problems were revealed. Many learned their lessons and revisited their approaches to military service registration and to forming respective databases of military personnel.
Unfortunately, there were issues related to allowance payments to the military personnel. This was related, first of all, to inaccurate or delayed updates of the Alushta database, or court-ruled blocking of funds deposited into the citizens’ bank accounts, for example. As of today, all funds have reached their recipients. Now prosecutors deal with all the problems that arise – and they do arise – as quickly as possible.
At the same time, the prosecution agencies have also been overseeing the observance of people’s rights, primarily the socially vulnerable groups. We introduced price controls in healthcare, food, and other essential goods markets.
The prosecutor’s office has issued orders to over 6,000 entities in the goods market to prevent or reduce price fluctuations for certain significant goods. This is a long-term measure, but we nevertheless continue to monitor the situation on these markets on a daily basis.
It goes without saying that we continued to oversee children’s issues, primarily their safety, and quality of education and healthcare. Mr President, parents are primarily concerned about their children studying at overcrowded schools that teach classes in two and sometimes even in three shifts. A number of parents also complained to me personally about schools putting as many as 45 children in one class this past September, with 15 to 25 classes in one school.
Why was this happening? Local governments sometimes lost track of population growth. Also, developers completed new residential buildings without the appropriate social infrastructure in place. Therefore, we instructed prosecutors to work on making changes to urban planning documents.
The implementation of state assistance programmes for parents with children also required a tough response and suppression of violations. More than 140,000 illegal rejections to pay benefits for children aged 8–17 have been reviewed at the prosecutors’ initiative.
As of now, the funds have reached their recipients, but problems with payment of such benefits continue to arise. Therefore, I have instructed the prosecutors to strive for a system-wide resolution of the existing problems, in each Russian region, and to rule out any subjective factors that may affect the implementation of state programmes that are so important for people.
We were also engaged in the supervision of the housing and utilities sector, something that worries our people a great deal. Since 2021, more than 650,000 violations have been eliminated in this sector. The measures taken helped relocate people from over 3,000 barracks and exclude more than two billion rubles that were wrongfully included in tariffs.
Prosecutors were given specific instructions to further supervise targeted spending of budget funds, as well as funds that come from our citizens, by owners of housing and utility networks. Of course, we will try to ensure that the owners of these networks maintain them at their own expense, and do not shift various failures or losses in the networks onto people.
The implementation of state programmes for providing gas supply to the regions, relocating people from dilapidated and substandard housing, transparency and justification of tariffs also remain under special control.
In particular, taking into account the mobilisation, we revised our approaches to overseeing compliance with legislation concerning entrepreneurship. Of course, we are now monitoring the implementation of the laws and regulations that have been adopted in this area, in particular, to ensure that entrepreneurs have lease extensions, as well as loan payment deferrals and additional time to resolve any issues that are needed in the future to engage in entrepreneurship.
We continued to protect property interests of the state, primarily where third parties tried to benefit, based on their premeditated and selfish interests. Thus, more than 16,000 claims concerning state and municipal property have been filed with courts.
Moreover, we also continue to return state control over strategic enterprises that are important for our country’s security and defence, the control over which was illegally seized by third parties, including in favour of foreign agencies, the state control of which has been illegally lost.
This also applies to the new territories. I instructed my subordinates to prevent the illegal transfer of property rights to real estate in the transitional period and to fully ensure the observance of the rights and freedoms provided by the Constitution of the Russian Federation for our new compatriots, Mr President.
Vladimir Putin: Mr Krasnov, at the most recent meeting at the Prosecutor General’s Office, we spoke about priorities. These priorities are specified in your report and I fully support them. First and foremost, they include overseeing observance of rights and freedoms – meaning all rights, political, economic, social and labour rights, in the broadest sense of this word.
I can see that recently, you have toughened control over securing the economic interests of the state, including in view of national projects and significant funds that the state allocates for the priority areas of the country’s economic development.
It was you who noted the importance of stepping up the oversight of the defence industry. This includes financing, discipline and ensuring the defence capability of the state.
Another priority is overseeing investigation and questioning, an important aspect related to the interests of the state and citizens. Of course, it is a complex issue and a special mission for the prosecution service. I am certain that you will continue working on this.
You mentioned the rights of the mobilised personnel. Please, continue supervising this matter, this area of responsibility.
And, of course, families with children must remain in the focus of our attention, in the focus of the state, under special control. You know that the Government pays priority attention to this matter, including financing and housing rights. There is an entire scope of support measures available, and they must work effectively.
I want to thank you for the work completed to date and I hope that the prosecution agencies and all staff will remain tenacious and productive in the short-term and, of course, mid-term perspective.
Putin: Thank you.: