Russian President Vladimir Putin is meeting China's Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Also on Putin’s agenda is his country’s economy and he insists Russia will not be allowed to fall into recession. So how can he guarantee this? CGTN correspondent Aljosa Milenkovic reports from St Petersburg.
00:00Well, Sally, he gave a very lengthy introduction speech at the beginning of the plenary session of this 28th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum,
00:13and he focused exclusively on the domestic topics, on the issues of the economy, eradicating poverty in the country,
00:21and he gave a rather rosy picture about what is happening with Russian economy.
00:26He substantiated that claim with the various figures, including increasing countries' GDP,
00:34also using some lines from which were given before by both MMF and also the World Bank about Russia's economy doing, to be honest, good.
00:45Nobody expected that after what happened in the year 2022.
00:49He also mentioned that Russia successfully reduced the level of poverty from 29% back in 2002 to only about 7%,
01:00and that the country will try to pursue the figure of only 5% of the level of poverty.
01:06And, of course, he also mentioned that for the first time Russia is actively seeking to get rid of hydrocarbon economy,
01:13that Russia is going to export even more products which are not related to hydrocarbons.
01:20He mentioned that over 50% of entire Russian GDP is now provided by non-hydrocarbon economy.
01:29And this is something that he seems to be very proud of when he addressed all those people at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum
01:38at the planned recession, which actually started like two hours later than expected, and it is still ongoing.
01:46And, Ayusha, do you have any details on what China and Russia have actually been speaking about?
01:52At this moment, we still don't have any official statements about what the Russian President Vladimir Putin talked about with the Deputy Premier of China.
02:09This is something that most likely we will have through the official channels, through the official statements,
02:14because that meeting, as well as many other meetings that happened here in St. Petersburg, were actually behind closed doors.
02:21What we can say is that a plenary session, which is still ongoing, and which is a key event of St. Petersburg Forum,
02:29this plenary session is still ongoing.
02:33And, interestingly enough, every leader who spoke in the beginning of the session was focused exclusively on economy,
02:41and only in the second half of this plenary session, they started talking about the international implications,
02:48about the crisis in Ukraine, about relations between the U.S. and Russia,
02:53and, of course, there is a mentioned relation between the global south and the rest of the world, meaning the global west.
03:01And this is something that it is being focused of address, not just by Vladimir Putin,
03:05but also by the Indonesian President, who is also here, Deputy President of South Africa, and a couple of other leaders.
