Putin confident of Russia’s ‘bright future’

Russia has a bright future, President Vladimir Putin said on Friday, pointing to the country’s enormous resources.

“As for the future, everyone actually has a future but the key question is what kind of future it will be. I am confident that Russia has a bright future. First, because we know what we want and what means to use to achieve our goals. Second, we have enormous resources, primarily human resources,” the head of state said at a meeting with members of the Business Russia organization.

The president also highlighted Russia’s robust education system. “We have established wonderful schools in recent decades, I mean the school of mathematics among others; this is fundamental. We have wonderful schools in engineering. Undoubtedly, all this has to keep up with the times and develop in line with the challenges that we are facing,” he added.

Addressing “Business Russia” Chairman Alexey Repik, who had emphasized the need to refocus on rapidly developing markets, Putin noted that Russia had begun to do that long before the current situation came to be.

“These rapidly developing markets started to develop rapidly not because of the situation in Ukraine but because of objective circumstances related to changes in the global economy’s structure and the emergence of new global leaders. This process has been going on for decades, it’s just that these things are becoming more evident now. Back in the day, we gradually began to shift our focus, and I repeat, this wasn’t because of the current tragic events. We simply understood in advance where these growth centers of the global economy were. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to do everything we planned yet,” Putin concluded.