basis, with a number of foreign officials appearing as participants each year. In the past for example, the French and Italian prime ministers Francois Fillon and Silvio Berlusconi have been guests, as well as Spanish prime minister Jose Zapatero.
In 2011 Turkish president Abdullah G�l was received as a guest participant by the Russian authorities.
Yaroslavl was chosen to host the event due to its thousand year history of being a meeting point for people of all cultures, a significant trading post, and its former status as Russia's second largest city, within which a great number of foreign embassies were situated. The award of this forum to the city coincided with the city's millennium celebrations and thus it is commonly viewed by residents to have been a gift from the Russian president to the city which has helped raise the city's global profile.
In 2011 this event became headline news in a number of countries due to the unfortunate events which led to the deaths of around forty people (players, suppor staff, and air crew) from Yaroslavl's 'Lokomotiv' Ice Hockey team. President Medvedev was, at the time of the crash, attending the conference at Lokomotiv's home stadium 'Arena 2000', and specially postponed a number of important meetings to make sure he could travel to the crash site and meet with crash victims' relatives. Later Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin also arrived in the city to pay his condolences
