“Russia has less friends every day, but more enemies”

Government policy harms the country on the world stage

Vladimir Putin signed a decree “On measures to ensure the national security of the Russian Federation and to protect citizens of the Russian Federation from criminal and other unlawful actions and to apply special economic measures against the Republic of Turkey”.

Nikolai Arefyev, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy, Innovative Development and Entrepreneurship, comments on the complex response measures of Russia related to the destruction of our Su-24 aircraft by the Turkish Air Force.

Our import substitution is marking time.

- I believe that the current government policy is detrimental to our country on the world stage. Russia every day becomes less friends, but more enemies. I don’t know which side to wait for the strike, but if we quarrel with Southeast Asia, we’ll be left alone with all our problems.

Of the former CIS republics, few have contacts with Russia. With Belarus - constant scandals and discord, although we have a Union State with it. The Customs Union does not develop, and Ukraine turned away from us altogether.

Turkey supplies us with the lion’s share of imported goods: food and industrial. And our import substitution is marking time, and in these conditions an embargo on imports and foodstuffs, and on the provision of services by Turkish firms, is being imposed.

I would support this measure, if the policy of import substitution was carried out successfully, but under long conversations about it, the acreage was actually reduced. This year, the crop of potatoes decreased by 17%, and the crop of vegetables decreased by 24%.

It would seem that it is easy to develop your own vegetable production - you need to plow all 40 million hectares that are free today, and then you can give up Turkish vegetables. But this is not done!

The overall economy is talking about recession

The refusal of Turkish industrial goods also had to be done in parallel with the rise of its production. Dvorkovich recently reported on anti-crisis measures and entered into an argument with me. He said that we are still import substitution. Yes, it goes the way it is sung in the song: “someone, in some places we sometimes”.

Somewhere they built some kind of greenhouse or a pigsty, or somewhere a little bit someone started sewing clothes. But if we want to achieve results, for example, in the light industry, then it is required to build at least twenty sewing factories and to sew shirts in millions, and not piece. The general situation of the economy speaks of a recession in all industries. That is, what is created is a drop in the ocean, unable to affect economic performance.

In addition, the issue of the southern corridor of our gas supplies has not been resolved. Only just felt the opportunity to pave the "Turkish Stream", but now this option disappears. And since our gas transportation problems with Ukraine have not been eliminated either, there remains only one reliable route: the Nord Stream.

As for the war in Syria, they say that if we hadn’t given a fight to the terrorists there, we would have to fight them anyway, but on our territory. However, I would argue with this thesis, the local militants had nothing to do with us.

We got involved in the fight against world terrorism where the Americans have already inherited. And now there is more chance that the militants of the ISIL organization, which is banned in Russia, will really try to revenge us. Now yes, we must be prepared for the threat from that side.