Russian President Vladimir Putin said Monday that despite the “colossal volume of difficulties” Russia faces from Western sanctions, they will not set the country back decades in its development, as its opponents predict, and stressed that it is impossible to isolate them.
“It is clear that we cannot develop apart from the whole world. But it won’t. In today’s world it is impossible to build a huge wall with a compass. It is simply impossible,” Putin said at a telematic meeting of the council for strategic development and national projects.
The president stressed that against Russia “today not simply restrictions are used intentionally, but practically the total closure of access to foreign high-tech products.”
Putin indicated that these are technologies that have a global character and that in today’s world they are the basis for the development of any country.
“That is precisely where they try to put obstacles for us to contain the development of our country, but we are not going to lower our arms or become disoriented or, as some ‘well-intentioned’ predict, go back decades. Certainly not,” she stressed.
The president added that taking into consideration the “colossal volume of difficulties” facing the country, new solutions will be intensively sought and “sovereign technological breakthroughs” and the products of domestic innovative companies will be used effectively.
He called for creating financial mechanisms so that fast-growing Russian companies can raise domestic capital for their development.
“We will say it frankly, the Russian financial system was not prepared to provide means to companies that do not have assets or large profits, but have great growth potential,” said the Kremlin chief.
Among these, he mentioned Ozon, one of the first Russian electronic stores, which last year sold goods for about 0.5 trillion rubles (about 8,650 billion pesos).
“These companies of ours actively used Western financial institutions, with which there are difficulties today. Now we do not have access to them,” said the president.
The president stressed that the key participants in the national projects are the country’s large corporations and highlighted the progress of Sberbank, the country’s largest bank in the field of artificial intelligence, Russian Railways, in quantum communications, and Rosatom , in composite materials.
At the same time, he pointed out that in five of the 13 areas of work there is no progress and in the remaining eight the goals have not been achieved in at least 20% of the indicators.