Russia's Medvedev Flies to USA to Solve Mysteries of Silicon Valley

Russia's Dmitry Medvedev starts a long visit to North America on June 22. His tour of the continent will end next Monday. On June 22-24 Medvedev is visiting the USA. Afterwards, on June 25-27, he is taking part in the G8 and G20 summits in Canada.

Photo: Russia's Medvedev Flies to USA to Solve Mysteries of Silicon Valley

US officials stated that Medvedev’s visit to the United States would be innovative since it would be dedicated to the development of relations between the two countries in the field of innovations and high technologies, Interfax reports.

Medvedev will start his visit to the USA in San Francisco and renowned Silicon Valley, where he is planning to get acquainted with the US experience in establishing high-tech companies. Russia is currently developing a similar project, which is known as Skolkovo.

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In his recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Medvedev said that he wanted to personally see how everything was organized in Silicon Valley. He said that he would like to create something like that in Russia.

Afterwards, Medvedev will visit a number of world-known companies based in Silicon Valley – Twitter, Cisco, Apple and Yandex Labs. The president of Russia may often meet the Google administration, which will be a part of the supervisory board of the Skolkovo project.

In San Francisco, Medvedev will be welcomed by California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The president and the governor will sign the memorandum of cooperation between the State of California and the Russian group of companies Renova in preparations to celebrating the 200^th anniversary since the establishment of the former Russian settlement of Fort Ross – the location which symbolizes Russia’s contribution to the development of America.

Russian and US companies are expected to sign a package of documents during the summit. Russia’s Rostechnologies (Russian Technologies) will sign an agreement with Boeing, Skolkovo will sign the agreement on cooperation with Cisco, KamAZ will sign a document with Cummis about the use of euro-6 engines, Vnesheconombank (Russia’s Foreign Economic Bank) will sign an agreement with Eximbank.

Medvedev also plans to meet Russian nationals working in Silicon Valley.

“Russia is interested in attracting these specialists to working on joint projects,” Sergey Prikhodko, an official with Medvedev’s administration said. The Russian community on the West Coast of the United States counts from 500 to 600 thousand people, he added.

In addition, the Russian president will visit the Stanford University where he will have meetings with spokespeople for public, academic and business circles of the United States.

The official part of Medvedev’s visit to the USA will take place on June 24, when he meets his US counterpart, Barack Obama in the White House. The Russian president stated prior to the visit that he was going to discuss the question of Russia’s membership in the WTO.

The two presidents will conduct a serious discussion about various issues, including the issues of arms control. Obama is looking forward to meeting Medvedev, news agencies report. After the talks, the leaders of the two countries will have dinner in one of the restaurants in Washington and then proceed to meetings with spokespeople for Russian and American business circles.

At the end of his stay in the USA, Medvedev will visit the US Congress where he will meet the administration of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The meeting will be reportedly dedicated to the synchronized ratification of the START Treaty by the parliaments of the two countries and about the fate of the infamous Jackson-Vanik amendment.

At night of June 24, Medvedev will go to Canada to take part in the G8 and G20 summits on June 25-26 and June 26-27.

It is worthy of note that many Americans would not like Barack Obama to be reelected, a recent research conducted by Gallup said.

Fifty-one percent of the polled US citizens said that they would not like to see Obama as America’s president in 2012. However, 46 percent said that the sitting head of state must be reelected.

Another research conducted by Rasmussen Reports said that Obama’s rating has dropped to its record low. Only 41 percent of 1,500 respondents approve Obama’s activities as the head of state. Fifty-eight percent are negative in their attitude to Obama as the president, Itar-Tass reports.