Russia's State Duma begins spring session

A spring session officially started in the State Duma to the strains of Russia’s state hymn on Wednesday.

In his traditional speech at the beginning of a new parliamentary session, State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin reported that there are currently 1,164 draft laws in the law making portfolio. Of them, 563 documents are at the stage of preliminary study, 365 are being prepared for the first reading, 234 for the second reading, and two documents for the third, final, reading.

"The year 2019 is special to our country. This is the year when national projects were launched; the way we will get down to work and the degree of its effectiveness in addressing the tasks set by the president in his State of the Nation Address are very important," the speaker stressed. "These tasks are not just important to us: they may be fateful," he said, warning that it will be very difficult to solve them. "Our voters are waiting for it still, and the future of our nation, in particular, highly depends on it," Volodin noted.

He named the enhancement of the quality of live, a 50% reduction of the level of poverty, the increase of longevity and the galvanization of the country’s technological development among these tasks. "All this great work should enable Russia to enter a new level," Volodin said.

"We should enter the five largest global economies, and it is very difficult to do it," he noted. "It is necessary first to ask ourselves to try to do all that is possible to be able to fulfill all that depends on us," Volodin said.