19 Mar 2022 20:00

Foreign governments apply horrendous pressure on businesses, which are reluctant to lose Russian market - Medvedev

MOSCOW. March 19 (Interfax) - Western companies leaving the Russian market really want to come back but fear to do it and tell Russia so, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev said.

"The companies quietly tell us something like that: 'we really want to come back but we are afraid'. No one wants to lose our market - there are both propagandists and pragmatics in the West. When words are on one side of the scale, and real money on the other, the other outweighs," Medvedev said on Telegram.

"Western companies, many of which loudly announced their withdrawal from our market, were thinking about coming back from the very beginning and reasonably preserved their staff by paying salaries and other contributions to the budget," he said.

Foreign governments are applying horrendous pressure on businesses, Medvedev said. "There is a feeling this is happening not in a capitalist economy but in a dictatorship (not the one of proletariats but the one of the degrading American establishment)," Medvedev said.

"Obviously, our patience is not unlimited," he said.

"It's a big question who is isolating whom. Russia has many reliable partners not only in the post-Soviet space but also in China, Southeast Asia and African countries," Medvedev said, adding that's a huge and promising market, "which is not torn by such contradictions as Europe."