Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin met with Valdai International Discussion Club members and answered a few question about his pre-election debates, migration policy and his attitude to presidential elections in 2018.

       Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said he would not take part in the 2018 presidential elections. “I am not going to run,” he said at a meeting with Valdai International Discussion Club members, where some of the experts suggested he could compete for the top post next time.

       Speaking about immigration and about plans to build more mosques in Moscow, the Mayor said there was “no need for a lot of additional mosques.” He said that most of the people who take part in Muslim religious holidays in Moscow were visitors, with only 20-25% of them actually living in Moscow.

       Mr Sobyanin commented on his decision not to take part in pre-election debates: “I think I was right not to do so. It would have made sense if there were only two candidates.”

       He also spoke of the plan to appoint Mikhail Vyshegorodtsev from Mikhail Prokhorov’s Civil Platform party as the city’s business ombudsman.

       At the end of the meeting, he wished Yevgeny Roizman luck as the new mayor of Yekaterinburg.

       Political analyst Nikolai Zlobin said Sergei Sobyanin spoke as a true politician and not just a city manager. “I was much more impressed with his speech than I expected to be, judging by the general image of the Moscow Mayor formed by his election campaign and people’s general opinion of him in Moscow,” he said.

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.