Amid Ukraine war, Russian president Vladimir Putin told officials not to use foreign words, drop foreign-made cars, and not using Western technology including Apple devices. However, it was reported that the officials do not appear to follow the Russian leader’s orders. Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev was spotted this week arriving at an event in a convoy of foreign-made vehicles as he was himself using a luxury Mercedes. Independent media organisation Verstka reported that this is not an isolated incident.
Russian government agencies allocated more than 53 million rubles for foreign cars, one week after Vladimir Putin’s order to officials to stop using them. Another Russian outlet Agentstvo published a report detailing how officials at Russia’s defense ministry, agriculture ministry, and state technology Rostec corporation are still using Apple products, despite the ban issued in July.
This comes as the ruble is in freefall as Moscow’s decades-long effort to create a “fortress economy” has had limited success amid Ukraine war.
The order to stop using foreign cars and Apple goods “will be difficult to implement, because on the market you cannot find a lot of alternatives,” Oleg Ignatov, the Crisis Group think tank’s senior Russian analyst told Newsweek.
“A lot of foreign companies, Western foreign companies and Korean foreign companies, they left the Russian market. If you wanted to buy a cheap car, you would buy a Korean car, but now it’s not possible. And so, the main cars on the Russian market are Chinese right now. The problem is that they don’t produce enough cars,” Oleg Ignatov said, adding, “And officials usually need cars of a special standard, business-class cars. Russia almost doesn’t produce any such cars. Even if officials should use them, it’s not possible to find such cars.”
“Sooner or later, they will localize production of Chinese cars in Russia, or maybe Iranian cars,” Oleg Ignatov added.
“This order, as with the order with cars, will be very difficult to implement, because they almost don’t have an alternative. The Russian variant is super expensive. It needs to be developed. And it means that if they maybe get rid of iPhones, instead they will use China’s operational systems,” the analyst explained.
