High tech: Putin wants to overcome “colossal difficulties” caused by sanctions

Russian President Vladimir Putin called on Monday to overcome the serious difficulties posed by sanctions that deprive Russia of high Western technologies on which it is highly dependent.

“We are not going to give up”

Russia is subject to extensive Western sanctions and many foreign companies have withdrawn from the country in reaction to the military assault launched against Ukraine. Referring to an “enormous challenge”, he called for making good use of existing Russian sovereign technologies and developing “new innovative national companies”. “We are not going to give up,” she insisted.

Since the offensive in Ukraine, the tech giants (Microsoft, Apple, Google, Adobe, Cisco) have either left Russia or suspended at least part of their operations in the country, leaving Russian consumers, businesses, administrations and users with no alternatives. Western vendors have also stopped providing technical support to their Russian customers.

The same goes for goods like Apple phones and computers, Cisco telecommunications systems, mobile app marketplaces, and even operating systems like Windows. For the moment, Russia has authorized so-called “parallel” imports of goods of this type, that is, without the agreement of whoever owns the intellectual property.

Exodus

On Monday, Vladimir Putin also indicated that Russian tech giants, such as Yandex or Ozon, also faced significant challenges because they were financed in Western markets or thanks to foreign financial institutions. “It is essential to quickly develop such mechanisms in the Russian financial system, so that fast-growing Russian companies can attract domestic private capital for their development,” Vladimir Putin said.

The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that Russia resists Western-imposed sanctions, but the effects of these are likely to have their most significant effects in the months or years to come, isolating the country from new technologies and logistics and global finance. chains Moscow promises to offset these effects in the medium term by developing Russian alternatives.

At the same time, the crackdown on critics of the Russian offensive against Ukraine and the severing of air and financial ties with the West has caused an estimated exodus of at least tens of thousands of Russians working in the new technology sector, increasing an existing deficit. According to Vladimir Putin, citing government figures, Russia will lose a million executives in this sector by 2024.