Russian President Vladimir Putin met with students of Moscow State University (MSU) and encouraged them to not leave the country and work overseas but to stay home and make Russia great.
“There is a saying that ‘the grass is always greener on the other side’ but in fact there is no place like home,” the Russian president said. “I myself worked abroad for almost five years and I know what it is like,” he explained. The Russian leader agreed that other countries “have many things that we don’t have.”
“There is a rule in life: if we respect someone, then we should accept that they are better than we are in some regard, and it is often true. However, if we look at it in a comprehensive manner, then we will see that there is no place on this earth more dear to us than our native country,” he elaborated, reported Russian State News Agency TASS.
In Putin’s opinion, “wherever we are, if we are not at home, we will always feel alien because those places lack the things that tie a person to his land – a land where you were born and grew up, where everybody speaks your mother language and you understand all the smallest details so you don’t have to look anything up in a dictionary.”
“I have some acquaintances, even close friends, who speak foreign languages as if they were their mother tongue, but nonetheless, they are not…this does not mean that we should cut all ties with the outer world and live like in a cocoon, we should be open to the world.”
“Education is a sphere that gives people an opportunity to be open, to soak up all the best knowledge and achieve the best results, this is what you should aim for,” the president told the students.