Employment support remains one of the most important areas of work for the Russian authorities, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday while meeting Labor Minister Anton Kotyakov.

"Supporting the labor market in today's conditions is one of the main areas of our joint work,” Putin was quoted as saying by TASS during his opening remarks. “But we are also well aware that all these activities, in fact, began even earlier, in the context of the pandemic and the challenges that we faced in this regard.”