On 10 June, CERN was honoured to receive the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev. The Russian Prime Minister was greeted at LHC Point 1 by CERN Director-General, Fabiola Gianotti, the Director for Research and Computing, Eckhard Elsen, the Director for International Relations, Charlotte Warakaulle, the Head of Associate Member and Non-Member State Relations, Emmanuel Tsesmelis, and the Senior Advisors for relations with Russia, Christoph Schäfer and Tadeusz Kurtyka.

After hearing a general introduction to CERN’s activities, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation visited the ATLAS cavern and the LHC tunnel and then took part in a round-table discussion with representatives of the Russian community at CERN in the Globe of Science and Innovation.

Russia has a long history of cooperation with CERN, having signed its first collaboration agreement in 1967, and is currently an Observer State with special rights. CERN has currently more than 1000 scientific users from Russian universities and institutes. Universities and institutes from Russia, as well as from JINR/Dubna, have contributed significantly to the LHC accelerator, to the four large LHC experiments, and to the computing infrastructure. Discussions on possible high-tech contributions by Russia and JINR/Dubna to the high-luminosity upgrade of the LHC (HL-LHC) are in progress. Russian universities and institutes are also contributing to further accelerator projects and R&D and to smaller experiments at CERN.