Prime Minister Vladimir Putin goes on a trip along the new Chita-Khabarovsk highway.

(Kazan, August 27, Tatar-Inform). Prime Minister Vladimir Putin goes on a trip along the new Chita-Khabarovsk highway, guided by a desire to see for himself several Russian regions.

“The built highway is not an ordinary event for Russia. I don’t want to use bombastic words, but all the same this is a salient event for Russia and has even historic meaning. Our country, occupying the largest territory in the world, has never been connected from the west to the east with a highway,” Putin is quoted as saying by Itar-Tass.

He noted that Russia had urgently built a railway before the war with Japan in 1904, connecting the Far East with other regions of the country.

The premier noted that people used to go “from the European part of the Russian Federation to the Far Eastern region by sea or snow-covered roads in winter”.

Then, the country built the Baikal-Amur Railway (BAM) not for the economic development of the region either, but above all under conditions of the growing conflict with the then China,” Putin continued.

According to the premier, construction of the highway in the region was not connected, for the first time, with any outside reasons. There had not been any highway between Chita and Khabarovsk. And at long last, we have built it. Let’s have a look,” the premier noted.

He called attention to a premise that economic life develops around projects of this kind. “We plan to build there several major projects. These are a hydropower station and a future cosmodrome. Specialists have been looking for long to choose a place for it and have found an optimal decision,” the premier explained.

*Sh