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President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that no iron curtain will fall on the Russian economy despite sanctions imposed by the West as Moscow will not shut itself off from the world like the Soviet Union.
The sanctions imposed on the West over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have prompted Russia, one of the world’s largest producers of natural resources, to have the biggest economic contraction since the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. has done.
Asked about possible deals with partners such as China and India amid the “shutdown” of Russia’s economy, Putin, speaking before next week’s St Petersburg Economic Forum, said Russia’s economy would remain open.
“We won’t have a closed economy, we don’t have one and we won’t have one,” Putin told young entrepreneurs in a televised meeting.
“We didn’t have a closed economy – or rather we did in Soviet times when we cut ourselves off, made the so-called Iron Curtain, we built it with our own hands. We won’t make the same mistake again – our economy will remain open.”
Putin, who was born in the Soviet Union in 2005, described the collapse of the USSR as the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century as tens of millions of Russians became impoverished and Russia itself suffered disintegration.
After major US and European companies and investors leave Russia, Moscow says it will turn away from the West and focus on growing its domestic industry and developing partnerships with China, India and powers in the Middle East.
Putin said, ‘Fences cannot be put up in a country like Russia.
Russia’s February 24 invasion killed thousands, displaced 13 million and raised fears of a wider conflict between the United States and Russia, the world’s biggest nuclear powers.
Putin says the West wants to destroy Russia, that economic sanctions are tantamount to a declaration of economic war. Ukraine says it is fighting an imperialist-style land grab and will never accept Russian occupation.
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