Dear Ladies and Gentlemen!

I am Nataliya Izosimova, Managing Director of the Foundation for Effective Governance. Thank you very much for finding time to participate in today’s conference. I would like to tell you in brief about our Foundation and explain why we initiated this conference in Moscow in partnership with newspaper Vedomosti.

The Foundation was founded by Ukrainian businessman Rinat Akhmetov in 2007. Mission of the Foundation is to encourage economic growth of Ukraine by promoting economic reforms. To this end we’ve chosen two ways: development and implementation (I’d like to emphasize ‘implementation’) of long-term economic programs, as well as systemic, well-structured and constructive discussion with the civil society of economic issues vital for the country.

The Foundation is an independent organization free from influence of any political party or business. The Foundation’s independence is ensured by the International Advisory Board chaired by former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell who is today in this conference room.

We do our job in Ukraine in partnership with such organizations as McKinsey & Company, Monitor Group, World Economic Forum, Intelligence Squared. We adhere to practice-oriented approach and cooperate with parliamentary committees, the Government, regions and international organizations. We do our best to bring all our initiatives to fruition. We moved from the concept of economic reforms to development of specific draft legislations with the participation of all political factions. We moved from economic strategies of regional development to putting specific initiatives in place in regions in tandem with local government and business.

Our practice shows that whatever politicians say, it’s the economy that unites people. The same refers to our two countries – Ukraine and Russia. Historic industrial relations, similar mentality, common markets, scientific potential are very strong reasons to unite intellectual and financial resources to adapt to new post-crisis conditions.

We do hope to have a constructive dialogue today to find common ways out of the crisis. We hope we’ll hear each other, teach each other, and better understand what we expect from each other at the level of practice-oriented things obvious both for politicians and business.

Today we want to create a platform for constructive dialogue that will encourage our cooperation and mutual respect.

The conference will have two sessions. The first one moderated by Avetik Chalabyan, Partner of McKinsey & Company, is dedicated to ways for Ukraine and Russia to tackle the crisis.

The second session will have a format of public debate run regularly in Ukraine by the Foundation for Effective Governance in partnership with UK-based Intelligence Squared. The debate motion is “Russia is Ukraine’s key partner to emerge from the economic crisis”. Two groups of speakers, with one giving arguments for the motion, and the other against it, will oppose each other in turn. The session will be moderated by Ukrainian journalist Zurab Alasania.

And now I would like to give floor to former Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, former Ambassador of Russia to Ukraine, and present Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation Viktor Chernomyrdin to deliver his welcome address.