Presenting gifts to children on the day of St. Nicholas, the President of FC Shakhtar Rinat Akhmetov, the composer Igor Krutoy and the Director of the Foundation for Development of Ukraine Anatoliy Zabolotny answered the journalists’ questions.

- Rinat Leonidovich, first of all, I would like to thank you for all the things you do for children. It is known that the players of FC Shakhtar help the children financially and also adopt them. Will this glorious tradition continue?
- I want to say that this is a good tradition. But first of all, thank you all for covering this issue, it is a big job. We are all aware that children should grow up in families. It is very important.

- You and Igor Krutoy have been organizing this charity event for ten years now. What has changed during this time in your soul and your life? What would you wish to the children?
Igor Krutoy: Something definitely has changed it even has had its impact on the work; I began to be increasingly interested in the children's songs genre. As a producer, we became engaged in children’s "New wave". At Christmas, we are staging concerts - the duos of children performing with the stars. Good, attentive attitude to children is the prerogative of a civilized country. There must be a desire in the heart of every adult to make a child happy. If such a microscopic fraction of our involvement in this issue provides warmth to children it will mean that we have not been in vain doing that for 10 years. Let God make more kids happy. 

- Does your heart ache when you see them?
Igor Krutoy: There are even times when it brings tears to my eyes. For example, today during our first visit, when a mother started weeping, as immediately all the children began crying too. It just shows how strong their relationship is despite the fact that they are not blood relatives! This, of course, is very touching.
Rinat Akhmetov: This morning there was a very sincere moment. Little children did not shed tears because of the toys, but because of the fact that, like everyone else, they want to have a family. It took us a lot of strength to resist and not to cry either. With regard to feelings, ten years ago we decided to visit with Igor a boarding school, to see how children live. Having been there we gave ourselves the word that we would come back and help children. What is charity? This is the system that fights systemic problems. Orphanage is a sorrow. Orphanage is a systemic problem. And in order to solve this problem, we need a clear systematic approach. We must all unite together: society, the state, patrons and journalists. Only then we can achieve the main thing: that every child should be raised in a family.

- Do you follow the fates of children whom you have helped?
Igor Krutoy: Unfortunately, it is difficult to do it properly, everyone has his own business. But we are aware of those improvements that occur, for example, the buses, computers; there is a lot of interest among teachers and educators of these institutions. We visit the same schools and families for many times.
Rinat Akhmetov: I think we all clearly see. Today everything is tracked by the Fund, and the Club. The main thing is that journalists are seeing everything themselves it is impossible to hide anything! And most importantly, that you help us find the right path and direction. If before we could call in a boarding school, then another one and so on, today our goal is to make everything possible for children to be in a family. And I think we gained some result, and we must continue this system work. The result should be such that in ten years time, there would be nowhere to go.

- Do you plan to expand the boundaries of these charity activities so that it would take place not only in Donetsk on December 19, but in other cities and on other occasions?
Rinat Akhmetov: Many years ago we were already asked this question. But the thing is that we are engaged not only in Donetsk but in the whole of Ukraine.
Anatoly Zabolotny: the site that we launched tells about children and clips of them featured on TV channels make up 70% guarantee that children will be taken in the family. This is an all-Ukrainian action. There have been cases when a child from western Ukraine has been adopted in the South. Process goes on. On our site sirotstvy.net there is a counter that shows that at the beginning of the week there were 802 adopted kids, to date, the figure has risen to 865! This figure has grown, and this is a 25-30% contribution to the national adoption.
Rinat Akhmetov: national adoption has increased by 25%, and we believe that this figure contains a small part of our involvement in this issue.

- Rinat Leonidovich, in your opinion, what is the main reason behind children ending up in orphanages? How to fight it?
- I have already talked about this many times. I would not want now to focus attention on that – it is sad. By and large, the country needs economic growth to fight such problems with the parents changing their attitude towards their children.

- At what level is our charity involvement in comparison with the West?
- It will be an obvious answer; we definitely have something to strive for.

- Did all your childhood dreams come true?
Rinat Akhmetov: I dreamed a lot. I dreamed of becoming a football player but I could not make it. Nevertheless I have not moved away from football. This is the main dream. I have once said that my mother did not have a big purse with much money inside. And I told my mother to keep the purse because when I grow up I will become a footballer and I will earn a lot of money. I did not happen to be a footballer but the other side of football became the vital part of me. There is not that purse anymore but the dream has come true!
Igor Krutoy: as a child I dreamed of becoming a driver, my dream has come true in this sense - I drive a car (smiling). But I never dreamed of becoming a well-known person who would attract large audience. I wanted to learn to play the accordion – I succeeded in that. So all these dreams have come true.

- What would you like your children to be?
Igor Krutoy: I would like them to be good people. And in terms of profession ... Yes, I follow their aspirations and abilities. The youngest daughter wants everything: to be a model, a singer, I do not know yet what she will be. The elder wants to be a singer who grants more autographs than does actual work. A son is engaged in business.
Rinat Akhmetov: I want them to be decent people. I wish that all children, not just mine, were honest and decent. So, getting up in the morning and looking in the mirror, they would not see on their faces stains of shame.

- Rinat Leonidovich, what is your attitude to the boarding system. Can it be fought?

- Today, to close boarding schools will mean to abandon children. We can not do that. In order to fight something, we must offer something better. Children should grow up in families and this is the most important goal we all should strive for. Let's see: the national adoptions has increased by 25%, we have the improved situation in the children's homes of family type. If you look at statistics, there were about four thousand of them, today is eight thousand. This suggests that we are following the right path. Perhaps we should speed up.

- In recent years there is a trend of family adoption. Will the latest administrative reform have a negative impact on that?
Rinat Akhmetov: I am convinced that we are going in the right direction with the state being our partner.

- Do you have a valid reason to think so?
- Yes. I have had conversations on this subject with the President of Ukraine. He is very serious about this issue. He also believes that children should grow up in families, and together we should all be into this work.

- Rinat Leonidovich, could you give your MP assessment of recent episodes in the Parliament?
- I think that the fight does not make anyone look better and I do not want to judge who was right and who was wrong. But generally, this happens not only in our parliament. As a child I was taught not to complain. By and large, I think, everybody must come together and think about how to live - to fight or not to fight. Find a decent solution but not to point fingers.

- Rinat Leonidovich, given that you did boxing, did your colleagues ask you to help them?
- Sometimes I feel like I should come! If the situation remains this way I will have to help my colleagues (laughing).

– Rinat Leonidovich, what else do you plan to build after the Donbass Arena? It seems that it should be a museum because all the needs of our children have become very material.
– We need to think about it. I said that all my projects will be connected with charity. I have already said that the charity is a system that fights system problems. There are a lot of problems in the country and they can not be solved by only one person. In order to overcome systemic problems, we need partners, we must unite. You know perfectly well what we are doing in the fight against cancer, tuberculosis. If we are going to do it systematically, we will change the situation.

– Will you co-operate with ex-President Yushchenko in terms of building the "Art Arsenal”, the largest museum in Ukraine, so that we could have our own Louvre.
– We must help the President Yanukovych. With regard to Viktor Yushchenko, then we will also combine charitable projects. We have a lot of projects, together we have seen systemic problems and we are continuing to fight them. How it will turn out, you, the journalists, will be able to assess yourself. Therefore, we will also move with Victor Andreevich in the right direction.

- Who will carry out the work of Donetsk Cancer Center?
- All that we undertake is done by professionals. Professionalism is the price and the quality of life. I think we all want to spend less money and get better quality in return. To do this, we have to hold an open and transparent tender.

- You were presenting the gifts today but what would you like to receive from Ded Moroz?

Rinat Akhmetov: There is only one thing I would like: I want all the children to be happy.
Igor Krutoy: All that we need to get from Ded Moroz; we pass to the children - the health and happiness.
Rinat Akhmetov: I would also like Ded Moroz help us beat Roma in the Champions League Round of 16.
Igor Krutoy: And if he does not help us, it will mean that he did not hear us. (Smiling)

– Returning to the charity. The system, which is now working in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, is partly based on the business. There is a bank which contributes 2% of its annum income to the hospital building. There is land, which the hospital rents and pays money from day one for 20 years in advance, developing their payments and there is also business involvement...

– Here we are talking about a systematic approach and systematic partnership. That is, someone must take at least some responsibility.

– Yes, but there are also people who at least partially compensate this funding. We do not see the same here in the next 5 - 10 years...
– It is true but we need to help people today. We can not, seeing no prospects, put down our hands and stop helping people. And if we want to help in terms of medical operation, we say: our charitable foundation will take over the funding and help, for example, thousands of people. But who are these people? And why should we help them, if there are also thousands of people who need aid? The answer is simple: if you help a thousand, so in the near future and they will help other people. For example, we built a PET (positron emission tomography) and it can serve, for example, three thousand people a year. But who will pay for it all? We say that we are ready for partnership with the state and will take care of 50% financing: fifteen hundred patients will receive aid from our foundation. That is why I say that we should all be together. Now they say that Ukraine has received from the Global Fund $ 95 million to fight tuberculosis, our Fund is also fighting this disease, there are other partners, and we must tighten tuberculosis from all sides and change the statistics. Today the statistics indicates that 60% of people cured from this disease but we need 85%, as in Europe. But there are two options: either we admire the West with saying how bad the situation is here, or we will at least try to do something. Possible mistakes only occur when we want to change the situation. That is we contribute our knowledge, our power and everything else that is needed to fight these problems.

– You talked about the partnership with reporters. Could you tell us from the business point of you how the freedom of speech is important for you?
– I always say: freedom of speech is the price of the country. If there is no freedom of speech, no one will invest in Ukraine and in this case it will be a recession. Lack of freedom of speech is the main signal for investments to leave the country. But to date we have freedom of speech. So I watch on channel "Ukraine" Schuster’s programme and I see that, I am being criticized on my own Channel. And I like it because it creates the value of the country and the value of my business. When I stop being criticized, I will realize that this is harmful for the value of the country as well as for my business.

– Where will you celebrate the New Year?
– At home with the family, as usual.

– What is your take on the appointment of Tabachnik as Minister of Youth Affairs and Sport, as he had previously not engaged in this field?
– Now he will. We are all on a psychological level, fear of the new, but we want to change. Right now the President is carrying out reforms, which everybody was talking about, but nobody actually made because it was unprofitable. Reforms mean changes. And any change is a painful process. By and large, we do not have anything to fear. It is like when you visit the doctor with a tooth ache and he tells you: you have to be patient, you must go through the pain and then everything will be fine. You go to another doctor, who says that you are all well and just gives you a pill. It seems that the pain is gone, but the second doctor in fact did nothing. And three months after your problem will not be solved by any doctor. Here we have the same kind of situation. May be it is better to be patient so that pain will go away forever.

– Rinat Leonidovich, you are a role model to all those children. Tell them more often that drinking and smoking is bad!
– You know, I always tell it like it is. When I am asked how I studied at school I honestly replied: bad. Although I have a choice: to lie or to tell the truth. My all teachers always say as one: he studied fine. My favorite subject was missing the school. It turns out, I give a bad example in terms of attitude towards school. But sometimes a child is not very aware what the most important things are. Well, who did not fight during school years? Nobody. Who was the most disliked person? The one who complained. Several years ago I felt very sorry that I missed out the bout between Lutsenko and Chernovetskiy. They should have shaken hands after the clash with resolving the conflict.

By material press-office FC «Shakhtar»