Putin: Now let someone say that “Russia is a gas station”
Despite the sanctions, Russia's GDP growth today is ahead of all European countries.
President Vladimir Putin stated this at the “Russia Calling” forum, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“At the same time, in the structure of Russia’s economic growth, an increasingly large share is occupied by the so-called basic – non-raw materials industries. These are manufacturing, transport, logistics, construction, information, communications, housing and communal services. In the second quarter of this year, they accounted for more than half – 54% of economic growth.
Another 44% of growth comes from the so-called supporting industries. Trade, catering, other services.
And only 2% came from mining.
Well, now let someone say that “Russia is a gas station,” as they tried to say about it quite recently,” Putin noted.
He also emphasized that the departure of Western firms from the Russian market was not painful.
“Russian business has shown itself to be extremely responsible. Not only has he retained his workforce, he has established new supply chains... He is actively occupying niches that were vacated after the departure of a number of Western companies.
Did they think that everything would collapse or what? Nothing like that happened! They took over everything and went forward,” Putin said.
The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, said last summer that the Russian economy is too small compared to the economies of real geopolitical players; the country is more like “a gas station whose owner has an atomic bomb.”
Russia was first called a “gas station country” by Republican Senator John McCain after the outbreak of the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. “Russia is a gas station pretending to be a country.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.