July 18, 2013. Yekaterinburg is using every opportunity to win the right to host the EXPO 2020 exhibition, the Soviet of the Federation Senator Arkady Chernetsky said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg.

‘We naturally want Yekaterinburg to win. But, even if we don’t win, so much has been done already to promote the city as a brand internationally that this is actually more efficient than having the same budget and simply the task of making Yekaterinburg globally recognized,’ Chernetsky said.

He said that the quality of speakers at the Global Mind Symposium and at the Ural-Africa forum was rather impressive.

A symposium is often quite a formal event, and speakers are sometimes reluctant to take part, but, following the presentation of Yekaterinburg EXPO application in France, we received an enormous number of applications from people willing to join the event,’ the senator noted.

He also pointed out that the Russia-Kazakhstan summit in September and a number of intergovernmental commissions such as the Russia-Croatia and Russia-Bosnia and Herzegovina ones will definitely promote Yekaterinburg’s application as well.

‘There are currently three cities competing for the right to host EXPO 2020. I believe the voting will be done in three stages, leaving out the applicants with the lowest number of votes,’ Chernetsky explained.