I'm reading the public part of the transcript of Putin's meeting with Chubais, the head of RUSNANO. It practically takes your breath away—our nanotechnology sector is apparently developing so brilliantly.
Success here, breakthroughs there.
Throughout all nine years of RUSNANO's existence, targets have supposedly been exceeded, profits generated, and new products created.
Did you, for example, know that we've had major successes in photonics? I didn't either. But apparently we have.
Very impressive.
And the whole country knows perfectly well: RUSNANO is a complete failure. Every major project has flopped. You don't even want to remember the famous "unique electronic textbook" that was supposed to go to every student. And do you remember those high-tech LED lamps the entire country was supposed to switch to?
RUSNANO's main "medical success" is the "drug" Kagocel, which is not actually a medicine. This is outright fraud—by that logic, you could sell sugar tablets too: 30% of people taking them would feel better, and they're tasty as well.
Countless billions in budget funds have been poured into it.
All of RUSNANO's "profits" are tied exclusively to exchange-rate differences. They got rubles from the state budget and converted them into dollars. The dollar rose against the ruble, and technically the company showed a profit.
Of the projects RUSNANO has actually pulled off, the only one I can recall is Anatoly Borisovich's $40 million house. You can't say anything against that—now that's a convincing project.
And the most astonishing thing in all this is that Putin has been keeping this idiotic RUSNANO and its head, Chubais, afloat for nine years—that's longer than Yeltsin's entire presidential term. For nine years, the two of them have been stringing us along and talking about the promise of this failed project. And yet to this day, in any election, the moment someone says "I'm a democrat," you immediately hear: "you and your Chubais" or "we remember those democrats from the '90s."
That worked out nicely. As V. Putin said at the end of the transcript: