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.
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