Putin Invokes Mark Twain, Says Russia's Economy Is Growing Despite War and Sanctions | APT

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-04

[00:00:02]French and Great Britain. Let's start with France. The France Press main managing editor. Did I say please?

[00:00:12]You have the floor. Good evening, Mr. President.

[00:00:17]I have a short question with regard to Ukraine. Uh Mr. Silinski, the economy is going to going to touch upon it.

[00:00:27]We see that there are certain difficulties because military expenditures have grown because of the special military operation.

[00:00:38]Is it possible that the Russian economy will withstand this difficulties? My second question is about Mr. Zilinski.

[00:00:47]If you are going to negotiate with him to sign a peace treaty, what what would you say to him? And do you think that he's a legitimate leader of Ukraine?

[00:01:01]Whether Mr. Zilinski is a legitimate representative of Ukraine, I would say that lawyers should deal with this issue, should answer this question, should analyze this in detail. Of course, if we reach this stage of signing documents, it's not it's not our whim.

[00:01:21]You understand? Any country in our position should sign documents of this kind.

[00:01:34]These are historic documents we're talking about. So we should sign this documents with legitimate representatives in accordance with the basic law with the constitution of the party. We're talking about Ukraine in our case. Uh, of course, this is an issue that uh will be pain painstakingly studied by future analysts and I've talked about it at length already repeatedly two years exactly to the day in 20 in 2024 the mandate of Mr. Zilinski expired.

[00:02:21]His presidential mandate expired at the end of last year. At the beginning of this year, people started talking about the elections in Ukraine.

[00:02:33]We don't hear any news about it now.

[00:02:36]Will they hold elections or not?

[00:02:41]We should ask these questions because this is important.

[00:02:47]No one is talking about it.

[00:02:50]If they decide to organize these elections, when is it going to happen?

[00:02:55]And the result is also very important.

[00:02:57]According to the Ukrainian constitution, the presidents can only be elected two times, five years each term. If you take the position that President Zilinski prolonged his mandate in a legitimate way. Well, two years have elapsed anyway. What is he going to do now? Is he going to be elected for five more years? No, it's not in accordance with the constitution. You can only be elected for two terms in a row for 10 years in total.

[00:03:36]What about the two years that he has been in power? What about the these last two years? There are a lot of questions in this regard.

[00:03:50]But if it so happens that we sit on the table and are ready to sign the relevant documents if there's a wish to use peaceful means to put an end to this conflict and Russia wants to do that. So if that happens, we'll find the people who would sign the relevant documents.

[00:04:09]It's important that they are willing to do that. It is very important, but it's a question for the lawyers.

[00:04:21]As far as uh what I can say to Mr. Zilinski, if we are nearing if we will near the end of the conflict, uh well, thank God. That's what one would say that it's going to it's going to be over soon. But but of course lawyers should research it carefully painstakingly and I think everyone understand that. So I'd like to reiterate it once again.

[00:04:51]We can sign these documents only with the people who undoubtedly are legitimate for signing such documents.

[00:05:03]There are a lot of options uh the the chairman of the recover maybe the zilans Mr. Zalinski himself but one should of course look what kind of documents these are and what legal consequences they're going to be. Well, the the main thing is the desire to do that, but we'll find a way around to to send the documents if time comes.

[00:05:31]>> I also asked about the economy. If you remember, as far as the economy goes, I remember Mark Twain's words. I I think it was Mark Twain.

[00:05:44]I think the the rumors about my death are hugely exaggerated. I think that was a joke that he made at one point.

[00:05:54]Now we remember the forecast that Russia will lose on the battlefield.

[00:05:58]I also remember the then president of the United States. He used to say that the Russian economy uh is was shattered is in was torn to to to shreds. But you have to look the real at the real trends at the real state of affairs. The real state of the economy the economy of the European Union over the last 3 years has grown by how many%.

[00:06:25]Don't even think about it. It's about it's about 3%. What about the Russian economy? it has grown by 10%. It's uh it's more than uh it's a threefold difference.

[00:06:40]The lead economies Germany for example less than a percent last year the Russian economy grow grew by 1% and it continues to grow.

[00:06:59]Of course we have some issues uh when it comes to macroeconom e economy in rise in inflation for example the financial authorities the central bank have made decisions harsh decisions to suppress the growth of inflation to uh to reinvigorate the economic indicators.

[00:07:31]These are those were hard decision to make. For example, increasing the uh key rate, key interest rate. But these measures bear fruit year on year. If we take April for example, our economy not fully but it is moving toward its target indicators 5.4%. 4% that is the indicator I think it's it's good result already at the same time our industry is also showing good results it is growing the the livelihoods of people are also on the rise we're talking about 28% growth in livelihoods Thanks to the real growth of salaries, we're talking about 25% growth in real salaries, we are satisfying all the social needs of the Russian citizens. We are uh increasing uh the the pensions uh social benefits, minimum wages.

[00:08:58]different measures to support large families by 2030.

[00:09:04]We were planning to decrease the number of people um do u receiving uh less than living wage. We wanted to decrease this number of people by 7%.

[00:09:18]But we have already achieved this task.

[00:09:22]Now it's 6.7%.

[00:09:32]So uh remember I was talking about the quote of Mark Twain but we see the events the uh the measures taken by our financial and economic authorities they bear fruit but uh the the central bank has increased its the key interest rate. Now it has reduced this Q rate uh down to 14.5%.

[00:09:59]Many people think that it is not enough and we should keep reducing the rate.

[00:10:05]I'm not going to comment on it because it's it's going to take a lot of time.

[00:10:08]I'm always uh listening this to this discussion between the economic block of the government and the central bank.

[00:10:18]But we are achieving results and we deliberately made that understanding and mindful of the fact that the volumes of investments the capital would reduce with such high interest rates. Of course we will see a decrease of investments but we did that deliberately. We tried to cool down the economy.

[00:10:39]One could say that we cooled it too much or one could say that we didn't do enough. But these were deliberate steps.

[00:10:46]We don't want inflation to go too high.

[00:10:48]We don't want dozens of percent of inflation rates like in some countries.

[00:10:54]We don't want hyperinflations. We are fighting for the health of the Russian economy. And I would like to draw your attention to another important fact.

[00:11:05]The national debt, the state debt is 15.6% of uh our GDP. What about France? They have over 100% 112% to be more specific more or less so. But we have 15.6%.

[00:11:24]All of these gives us reasons to believe that we are on the right track and we feel