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Russian President Vladimir Putin (Image: Kremlin.ru)
Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday said that Moscow no longer wants Western companies back in the country after they left amid the raging Russia-Ukraine war. On Friday, Putin touched upon a plethora of issues as he addressed the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. In his passionate address, the Russian President not only boasted about the stability of the country’s economy but also claimed that he was ‘forced’ to initiate the so-called military operations in Ukraine.
At the St. Petersburg forum, the Russian President kept an optimistic stance about the country’s economic growth. He reassured people that welfare payments are working well, and salaries in the country have risen despite Western sanctions. He also talked about the considerable rise in the country’s GDP despite all the hindrances and predicted that the Russian economy will grow by over 1 per cent this year. “In April 2023, GDP increased 3.3 per cent, annualised, and is expected to add over one per cent by the end of the year,” Putin asserted. “This will enable our country to retain its place among the world’s leading economies,” he added.
Putin also had a message for the Western companies who left Moscow following the commencement of the Russia-Ukraine war in February last year. “I don’t think it is any secret that when I discuss things with Russian business they emphasise the fact that Western firms shouldn’t be allowed back in,” he said. “On all of these international economic forums and meetings the main request of me has been for Russian businesses not to allow Western companies back,” he furthered. The Russian president made it clear that Moscow is managing to cover its own needs ‘more or less”.
In his passionate speech at the economic forum, the Russian President also touched upon why Kremlin unleashed a war against Ukraine or what they call, “a special-military operation’. Putin stated that the war in the eastern European country was initiated by the Ukrainian regime when they supported ‘Western sponsors in 2014’ (when Russia annexed Crimea). “I was forced to use the armed forces in response to the request of Donetsk in order to stop this armed operation,” he said. “Ukraine has not seen any success on the battlefield, and I have no doubt that more Western military equipment will be destroyed in the country,” he added.
Russian President Vladimir Putin confirmed on Friday that Russia has transferred the first set of nuclear weapons to Belarus. “It happened, the first nuclear weapons were delivered to the territory of Belarus,” Putin said at a forum on Friday. The confirmation from the Russian President came just days after his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko announced that Belarus has started taking the delivery of Russian tactical nuclear weapons. At that time, Lukashenko claimed that some of these weapons are “three times more powerful: than the atomic bombs that destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. “The bombs are three times more powerful than those (dropped on) Hiroshima and Nagasaki”, Lukashenko exclaimed during his interview with the Russian state TV channel Rossiya-1. Overall the Russian President boasted about the Russian prowess in both economic and military aspects.