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奧列格·巴拉巴諾夫:俄烏沖突結(jié)束后,俄羅斯會(huì)轉(zhuǎn)回西方嗎?“絕不可能”
最后更新: 2024-05-27 11:36:19以下為英文原文:
Han Hua: This military operation has lasted almost like two year and a half. Russia's economy is also shifting its structure from more natural resources based, to a more diverse economic development structure. This is what I understand. Can you elaborate a little bit on this and how to foresee the economic future for Russia.
Oleg Barabanov: Yes, that's true. From my personal point of view, it’s better that we discuss it among us, the Chinese audience would understand more. Because Russia, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and after the Communist Party stopped being the leadership of the country, Russia economically always followed the neoliberal model. So large scale state investment into real industries were quite limited. Now, for oil and gas exploration there were quite significant investments, both state and private. For all real industries, for machine building, for production of various goods, the state investment, the state initiative to invest were limited or almost non existent, and all our governments just follow the neoliberal model as the first axiom on market financial stability, to stop the inflation rate and so on, and all the investment into real industries were considered as a bad communist heritage. And so, it was not only a political economic decision, it was unfortunately an ideological decision. And now, after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, our government was forced to invest into real industries, mainly to the military production, but we can already see a spillover from the military investments into the civilian production sector.
30 years after the end of the communist rule in Russia, our government started to invest into the real industries. Many people are surprised that the Russian economy now behaves quite well, quite effective under sanctions, under pressure of American and European sanctions; but maybe one of the key answers why we became quite effective under sanctions, it is exactly that the government started for the first time in 30 years to invest in real industries. And in fact, Mr Belousov, our new minister of defense, he was the first deputy prime minister, and he was the key protagonist, the key ideologists in a good sense of the word, of investing into industries. Because there are two factions within our governmental circles, one is neoliberal, just focusing of macro financial things; another one was the idea to promote the investment into industrial projects, and Belousov was one of them, at least what we could see publicly, he supported investment into the industries. And maybe those skills will be useful to his new position as a minister of defense, to coordinate budget spending into military industries.
Han Hua: Very interesting. So you mean that in the past 30 years that actually you have made solid foundation into real industries. And because of the war or the military operation, it just creates some natural results because of the military spending and because of the spillover of the military spending, right?
Oleg Barabanov: Yeah, that's true.
Han Hua: And the economist who's now the Defense Minister is the driver behind all the processes. So let me ask you this: Putin’s reelections as president signals very strong stability during a very difficult time in your country. What do you think we can expect over the next six years?
Oleg Barabanov: It's true that the figures of his electoral result were quite high, because usually for his last reelections, the figures were about 70% in his support. Now the central electoral commission proclaimed that the result was 87%. So more or less 15%, 17% higher. And officially it was explained that there is a growing support for the president during the current geopolitical situation.
For the plans, Putin has a habit immediately after the start of his new term to publish a series of presidential decrees of his medium term economic vision, on what could be a problem for the next six years. Because the day of inauguration is traditionally May 7, and all those decrees are published in May as well, we name them the May decrees. And so the newest May decree was published; in there is the vision of the president on how to develop the economy and society. He promised that the budget spending to the social sphere, to social economic sphere should not be diminished because of the growing percentage of the military spending. And in fact, in this May decree, there are some large scale projects on the family, on support of the families, on support of the schooling, on support of medicine, to other sectors. So now what is important is the fulfillment of those May decrees, because we have quite diverging remarks in the Russian experts sphere, how the results of the previous May decrees were achieved or not achieved in full, and if not, why were they not achieved. As for the new ambitious program behind the May decrees, the question is how it could be achieved effectively.
Han Hua: Is there any talk or consideration of post Putin?
Oleg Barabanov: For the moment, I think no, because he was reelected with a very high result, now he will have six years more, at least within Russia. Sure, we have the opposition circles and many of them have emigrated from Russia after the start of the war, and sure they have quite divergent views on Putin, but within the country, at least in the public sphere, at least the mainstream media, mainstream Telegram channels and other spheres of social media, we can’t see any alternative for the moment; at least nobody was proposed as an alternative. So for the moment, I don't see that there will be some new event.
Han Hua: During Putin's visit this time, during his super busy schedule, he even made it to Harbin, and went to Harbin Institute of technology. Does this indicate that this is an integral part of Putin's turn to east strategy? And what do you think of the priorities of this turn to east strategy?
Oleg Barabanov: First, let's start with Harbin in Heilongjiang province. Sure, that's very important. And I'm very glad that now the official Russian delegation visited Harbin at the highest level, because three regions of the Chinese Northeast, Heilongjiang and two other provinces, are quite deeply connected to the Russian Siberia, to the Russian far east. We already had some common economic projects at the provincial level between private companies. What is important is to enlarge already existing deep economic background of agriculture cooperation, transport cooperation there are between the Chinese northeast and the Russian Siberia.
And I know that there are many visits and many talks of delegations at the regional levels. The governors of the regions had good contact. And now, if all this could be supported from the highest political level, it would be useful for both countries. And today it could be useful to promote the existing projects.
Look east has two dimensions, one is more or less global, to look east globally and geopolitically and geoeconomically. And another is to look east at the local level, which is also quite important.
Han Hua: What are the priorities in your opinion? Agriculture or transportation?
Oleg Barabanov: Could be one of them, because we already had quite comparatively strong cooperation in export-import of agricultural products, in grain, soybeans, some other products in the food sector.
The transportation sector is also quite important. A couple of years ago, the new bridge was built over the Heilongjiang river between Heihe and Blagoveshchensk. And there are some other projects for transportation. What is important is also to develop the western part of the Russian Chinese border, because we have small segment of our border, 50 km in the west, which is the Altai Republic of Russia and a part of Xinjiang in China; we already had several projects for developing the western segment of our border. There were ideas of gas pipeline, there were ideas to build a road. Then many of those projects were stopped somehow. And I hope now, because I’m from the Altai region, I'm personally interested in developing the cooperation not only in Heilongjiang but the Western part of our border. And I know the story of many of those projects and hope they could be developed now as well.
Han Hua: This is a very strategic move for Russia because it means that you're turning back to the West, to Europe, you're facing the eastern countries, including China as the most important strategic partner. So in the long term, will this turn to east strategy be sustained?
Oleg Barabanov: Yes. At least I hope so because previously, already for several decades, Russia promoted the idea that we must look east, must not focus all out policy economy on the west and mainly the EU.
Look east, it means mainly, frankly speaking, look at China. Because we have the common border of several thousand kilometers. We have shared values and a good political atmosphere between our countries. There are many projects to develop Russian Chinese cooperation. Until 2022, Russia still was anchored to the west and the main economic efforts were done to develop the cooperation with the EU.
In fact, the figures of our export import operations with the European Union consisted of more or less a half of our foreign trade in general. And I remember about 10 years ago, at one meeting between Putin and Xi Jinping, they proposed the idea that the volume of the foreign trade between Russia and China should be aimed at one hundred billion dollars. And more or less ten years ago, it was considered as too ambitious because we had between 50, 60, maybe seventy billion dollars of bilateral foreign trade. But now we have 220 billion dollars of the foreign trade between Russia and China. So those over-ambitious aim of 10 years ago was surpassed twice and more. These figures show that now Russia had a vital interest in promoting cooperation with China in all economic spheres. Also, we are developing our economic relations with other big economic powers in Asia; with India, we have the growing figures, and with other countries, so this strategy started to go.
Han Hua: There is a saying about how China and Russia can jointly work together to help the world to find solutions to the current disorder and difficulties. And there is even mentioning about China and Russia can be two engines, to help solve the deglobalization’s difficult situation, by working together with the vast Global South to break out from the so called high fence small yard situation. What's your take on this?
Oleg Barabanov: As I already said, Russia is really grateful to China, to the Chinese society, for your position now in the current geopolitical situation. Nobody expects that China could join Russia at the barricade in direct fighting with the West. But we appreciate the balanced Chinese approach to the peace initiatives and also to promote the general new vision for making the new world order, because the new world order is a very bad phrase, we’ve used it for 20 or 30 years. But what we really need is the real common vision of how the better world could be structured, how it could be built and organized. And China already have that very deeply elaborated foreign policy strategy, in your last Congress of the Communist Party of China; I remember the report of Mr Xi Jinping had very large section on foreign policy, on the visions, goals and values of the foreign policy of China, and Russia shares almost all of them. So in that sense, we are more or less natural partners because our foreign policy strategies and goals are shared or well understood by the other. So in that sense, Russia China cooperation could be at the center of the new global strategy, how we can build a better world for the future.
And also it's very important because for me personally, the Americans and the Europeans are very stupid in their current policy on China. Because for example, if you have two enemies or two adversaries, and with one of them you are already in open military conflict, this is Russia and the West, then at least for the moment, stop pressing the second adversary. If they be clear in their foreign policy and not be dogmatic, they could stop pressing China, at least in this situation, just with the aim to break the relations between Russia and China. But they didn't. They exactly strengthened their pressure on China. They continued the provocations in Taiwan, remember the visit of Nancy Pelosi on the province of Taiwan and so on. And because of that, I'm not expressing the Russian propaganda, but I think that the people in China and the society in China and media in China in these two years already understood that China definitely will be the next target for the United States. Russia is the key target now. But all the American activity, all the American policy and European as well, shows for us that China definitely will be the next target for them. So it all means that Russia and China should be friends.
Han Hua: But when the war ends, will Russia still think about Europe or the west as a friend or partner to work with economically, for example?
Oleg Barabanov: Well, it's a good question, because I remember about 10 to 15 years ago when Russia promoted the policy to look east, some of my Chinese colleagues, the Chinese experts ask me and ask other Russian, okay, now you have more or less bad relations with the West, with United States, with European Union. So you decided to look east. But let's imagine that one day your relations with the EU, with the US will be restored. You will forget China immediately. In one day, in one night. And they had reason to say so, because as I already tried to explain you, the real Russian politics was mainly western centric, EU centric in economy, and so the desire to be part of the west was and is quite a diffuse topic among the Russian elites. So some of them have their children, their wives in Western countries, in Europe, but how many children or wives of Russian elites are in China? I think nobody, or rarest exceptions. It all means that question, should China trust Russia in our Look east policy, was reasonable.
But I think that now, in the current situation when the open war is going on, and the relations are broken totally between Russia and the West, restoring the old nostalgic relations with previous matters would not be possible. At least officially, our Foreign Ministry expressed several times that there will not be the restoration of Russia-EU relations in the future, because Russia will remember the opposition in the current situation. So I hope that we will not turn west once more, and we fulfill our obligations and our promises to the Chinese friends.
Han Hua: What's your goal for the BRICS summit? Would there be, for example, any financial collaborations against the sanctions from the west?
Oleg Barabanov: Yes, sure. This year, Russia will be hosting the BRICS summit, will be done in October in Kazan, the capital of the Republic of Tatarstan in the Russian Federation. And now I see that both our governmental circles, our ministries and our NGOs are preparing for the summit. It is considered as the key foreign policy event in Russia for this year. And among the key topics, because the agenda, you understand, is always quite wide in the BRICS summit, if you look at the presidency conclusion, memoranda, declarations after the summits, there are about several dozens of pages, several dozens of points. So a very large, a very detailed documents.
But the key political question as I personally see it could be focused on the greater solidarity between the BRICS countries, because now we have enlarged it, new members are invited to join the club. Their leaders will be present as the new BRICS members. They have to adapt to already existing structure of the agenda of the BRICS.
The solidarity of the members is the key factor that could be proposed by Russia, and it could be developed in other presidencies of the BRICS. Because for the moment, if we see BRICS as an institutional structure, it's very important on the symbolic level, as a symbol of non western agreement, or cooperation among the major non western countries, and all those annual declarations of BRICS summits are very important to promote a new set of values, to promoting a new set of principles for cooperation, for justice and Equality in international relations, for the fight against poverty and so on, and to propose some new decisions within the non-Western countries.
Several years ago, BRICS launched the New Development Bank as a new financial institution. Comparing BRICS with many other formats, like with G7 within the West, we're still at the beginning of our process. And what is important from my personal point of view is to strengthen the internal solidarity within the BRICS members. Because if an international structure could be effective in the global level now, in the current situation, it has to be strong, and the strength of the organizations means not only the good symbolic letters written in the declarations, it means the real solidarity in the real politics among the members. So that how I see it, but I'm not the decision makers there.
The first thing will be to strengthen solidarity. And another economic one, just to conclude, would be to develop further, not renounce the US dollar completely now, but a year ago, the presidents of the BRICS already proposed the idea that payment for commercial contracts within their countries could be done in their national currencies. And now the special report of the ministers of finances of the BRICS countries is expected during the summit. So how it could be done smoothly, not to diminish the potential for cooperation, but just to strengthen.
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