Russia has beaten ‘addiction’ to Western tech – Putin
The Russian economy has successfully overcome the “addiction” to Western technologies and is developing a competitive domestic market, President Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.
During a meeting with participants in the 3rd Congress of Young Scientists in Sochi, Putin commented on the ‘Our Lab’ exhibition of scientific equipment produced in Russia.
“Our so-called partners believed that they had hooked us on a technological needle and we would never get off,” Putin told the scientists. “Thanks to the efforts of people like you and your colleagues, it turned out that this could be done – and quite quickly, too.”
Russian researchers used to buy their equipment abroad, but have since turned to domestically produced alternatives, in part due to the embargo imposed by the US and its allies over the Ukraine conflict.
“This is important,” Putin said. “Because that means there is a domestic market for these devices. And if there is a market, then there was an economic incentive to produce. Back then, when you could buy everything abroad, there was no domestic market.”
The ‘Our Lab’ exhibit in Sochi featured 110 pieces of scientific equipment from 17 leading suppliers in Russia and Belarus. The program’s online catalog features 19,000 products from over 5,000 companies.
Putin praised this kind of competition as a way to ensure quality of any item that is mass-produced, while custom builds can satisfy the need for certain specialized devices.
“It’s a very simple thing, but it works,” he said.
The three-day conference has been hosted by the Sirius Park for Science and Arts in Sochi, established in the facilities originally built for the 2014 Winter Olympics.
