Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was interviewed by RT France, Paris Match and Le Figaro and gave answers to their many questions on diverse issues.
In his comments, Lavrov noted that:
“It would be unwise and lacking foresight for Russia not to use advantages in the West and in the East. Due to objective factors the main population of Russia is located in its European part, where industry and agriculture are best developed. Overall, the Far East is less developed than the European part. So perhaps there are more business opportunities in the west of Russia because they are more easily accessed – geographically, economically, infrastructurally. There were many old partners, the relations with whom have been developing for many decades, and even centuries.”
According to the minister,
“We realized well that we should create conditions that would interest people in the Far East, so they would want to move there, to work there and to settle down there. The Far East must have the necessary economic, transport, social and cultural infrastructure. The government is working on this. This is difficult, because a lot of work must be done, the tasks are ambitious, but we can see the progress. A number of legislative initiatives have been adopted to give a boost to the development of these Russian regions. The free port of Vladivostok has been established there as well as a simplified e-visa procedure and benefits for those who want to move there, including free land among other things. Of course, we have been doing that for almost 20 years. But when relations with Europe started to decline due to the sanctions and other political processes, when trade decreased sharply (it was $440 billion in 2013, while last year, although trade grew compared with 2016, it was only $217 billion), we began looking for opportunities to compensate for the dwindling volume of mutually beneficial economic cooperation. Such opportunities were becoming more pronounced in cooperation with China, as well as with India and with Japan and Korea to some degree, because during that time these countries’ potential grew significantly and they showed an interest in our goods, not only in energy, but also in cooperation in space exploration, nuclear energy, aviation and car manufacturing. So there is no political blueprint or program. This is just a response to the current conditions in order to develop economic ties as effectively as possible, nothing more.”