I am the head of the department of minimally invasive radiology at Smolensk State Medical University.

That is a large city close to Moscow.

Generally speaking, Russia consists of such cities - Smolensk, Oryol, Bryansk, Samara.

In other words, there are many cities in Russia other than Moscow and St. Petersburg, and that's where most Russians actually live.

What's good about my department is that we've finally come closer to the rest of the world.

That is, we've started using minimally invasive medicine.

Minimally invasive medicine is what we had before...

How should I put it? I should put it slightly differently.

Minimally invasive medicine is when we do a lot of work with the help of a small cut. That's the main thing.

And I'm happy that our Eurasian Association has brought together people from all over the world.

So politicians want to drive us apart, but we, at the professional level, gather in one place, where the main thing is not your political, religious, or gender approaches, but your intellect and medicine.

Today was... What makes today so great is that it wasn't a traditional setup where the students sit around, the professor lectures, and they listen carefully, and some may be dozing off, some may be looking at their iPhones.

But this was a discussion.

So I argued with John, John asked me questions.

I answered him, and truth was born in these arguments.

So today's question was, why are thyroid disorders on the rise worldwide?

Look, the UK, England, Europe, Russia, China, and India have many doctors.

Everything's nice, MRI, ultrasound, surgery, but the incidence of disease is on the rise.

So the search for the drivers of the rise in disease incidence and how to identify the disease at an early stage is what we looked for in today's Q&A discussion.

Wonderful.

In principle, it's an open medical information world.

That's the main thing.

There shouldn't be any barriers for our exchange of opinion.

We are very interested in our young people going over there - to Europe or the US, and professors and people with more experience, for example in certain areas of medicine, came here.

And here, in this exchange of opinion, we will look for the truth.

That's it.

- What's so great about the regional center at Smolensk University?

The main thing is young people, young doctors.

Because when John and I are old someone will have to treat us. But we can't say that!

(Will you interpret that for him afterwards?)

The main thing is that our regional center, the westernmost point in Russia, is a talent pipeline.

What is a talent pipeline? It trains young doctors.

And that's very important because times change, there are new challenges, new diseases, and we need new doctors.

Our university is quite interesting and good.

And it's nice that we are now part of this world trend.

That's good.