![]() But just as certain, the Russians are losing out on a high-tech economy they should have built years ago and never did, choosing instead to rely on their “Western partners” as their diplomats like to say, instead of bothering to create their own high-tech ecosystem at home.MOSCOW, Dec 17 (Reuters) - Tatyana Bakalchuk is a rarity – a dotcom billionaire uninterested in outside capital or a stock market listing. For sure, the Europeans have a much harder time getting Russian fuel. Russians may like to joke about Europe’s energy crisis, due in large part to its own singular focus on climate change and restrictions (but not outright sales bans) of Russian oil and gas imports. Regardless, Russia is being ringfenced here cut out of the modern economy, an economy it never developed on its own post-USSR and is only now realizing its dependence on the West for tech.Ī little dependence is fine. This is likely to be symbolic and hard to stop completely. Earlier this month, China said it would ban some sales of microchips to Russian defence contractors. China will increase its footprint, but is being cautious here. There is no way Russia will replace even half of them with domestic players. Over 1,000 companies left Russia in 2022 because of the Ukraine War. But even though many VTB-related subsidiaries were sanctioned neither Wildberries nor its owner were on it. The full list of sanctioned individuals was published on Dec 16. This month, the European Interest online publication questioned whether the 9 th round of EU of sanctions would include Bakalchuk and/or Wildberries. It is ranked ahead of India’s Flipkart, China’s JD.Com and Wayfair. The company is a top 10 e-commerce player. It may be even higher as 2022 draws to a close. If Wildberries did take over AliExpress, they would be gaining 35 million monthly active users, which is where the Chinese e-commerce company was in 2021. Wildberries plans to nearly double its turnover in 2022."Wildberries plans to reach turnover of 1.5 trillion roubles ($24.7 billion) this year," Interfax quoted company CFO Vladimir Bakin as saying. Now, even Chinese companies weary of secondary sanctions are reportedly leaving or on standby and no longer expanding. Some left kicking and screaming, but leave they did. The West bought into Russia quickly after the fall of the Soviet Union but left even faster after the winter 2022 incursion into Ukraine. Now, like all things Russian, it is banned due to sanctions launched in 2022. Google came to town but was quickly beaten out of the market by Yandex, once tradable on the Nasdaq. ![]() Years later and Russian tech companies have grown their footprint. They had nothing to show at home for their computer and math skills. He lamented this scenario – a country that got a man into space but had no real computer companies to speak of. ![]() Government offices and the big state-owned enterprises ran on IBM computers. Moscow offices used Microsoft and Adobe software. Vladimir Putin told Oliver Stone in the 2017 Putin Interviews documentary that after the fall of the Soviet Union, all of the tech in Russia quickly became American. Extracts from the article are compiled below for your convenience. Among several cases he points to the fate of Russian e-commerce giant Wildberries, which has so far escaped western sanctions despite pressure from Ukraine and Poland. Kenneth Rapoza of Forbes discusses the perils of Kremlin’s attempts to strengthen Russia’s tech sector amid sanctions.
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