Alexey, I think Medvedev by saying that ‘Russia is backwards because its economy is raw material based’ was too critical. Russia exploits row materials and exports them because Russia has raw materials. People forget that technology is also needed in order to exploit the raw materials. Natural development would be to add value to the raw materials instead of selling them. And I think this process is well advanced. Considering that Russia is a net creditor country makes her looking well on the global map. Of course things can improve. Modernization should be ongoing process and was well highlighted. By contrast the Great Evil’s economy is based on wars and abuse of debt. They have much greater problem. I did not see in Medvedev address anything on small business and inflation. More government programs are needed to promote small business. Inflation is persistently too high and hampers economic growth. There are too many people in Russia employed in the non productive sector. Medvedev said few things about competitiveness what was good. However that should not only point to business. The government and administration should be competitive as well. How many public officials are there for each million of citizens? The government itself has much to do in order to allow business be more competitive. It will be not enough to sell public companies to private investors. How easy it is in Russia to do business. In Europe Russia is ranked on second last place. Finally consider that, the US attracts $ trillions of investment in treasury notes that pay mere 3% interests. I am sure Russia can generate projects that will be much more competitive.

He presents good suggestions and what needs to be done but does not define how he is going to be able to achieve them. Why does Russia not make serious trade and economic policies towards Asia states like it recently did with China? Asian states need energy like oil and gas to power there economy and Russia need to develop IT sector and other industry so why doesn’t Russia sell oil and gas to Japan and South Korea in exchange for joint companies developing things like a car industry, etc in Russia?