Sanctions imposed by the West against Russia will remain in place for a long time, President Vladimir Putin said on Tuesday, stressing that the Russian economy should focus on “sovereign development”, Lenta reported.

Vladimir Putin at the Resurrection servicePhoto: Serhii Fadeichev / TASS / Profimedia

During a video conference of the Presidium of the State Council in Moscow, Putin said that many industries in Russia were at the epicenter of a wave of sanctions imposed in a very short period of time, and that the West initiated a sudden break in trade, economic and cooperation.

He added that for this reason, not only priority measures are needed to replace imported technologies and products, but also “mid-term and long-term transformations for the development of sovereignty” of the Russian economy.

The head of the Kremlin assured that there are “active investments” to replace imported equipment and software, as well as to finance new development projects within the framework of the new “economic cycle” of economic growth, which the Russian government is counting on.

Putin says that Russian products have no analogues in the world

“Critics and skeptics said that we would be left without the necessary range of food products and without food at all,” he charged, saying that everything had gone “backwards” and that in terms of the quality of Russian food products, they exceeded “any Western product due to special attention to standards”.

Putin also stated that Russian exports have increased several times in volume, reaching “even incomparable with what was before”, while “imports, on the contrary, have decreased”.

“Now we are exporting and fighting for markets to sell,” he said, but stressed that Russia must now move “toward full sovereignty, at least where it is necessary to increase our independence.”

His comments came after he visited a locomotive and railway equipment plant in Tula region earlier on Tuesday.

The Kremlin signaled last week that it expects a “protracted hybrid war” with the West as Russia began a transition to a war economy in the middle of last year.

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