Russian President Vladimir Putin

- In 1990, the ports of the Soviet Union had an aggregate capacity of 600 million tonnes, but after the country broke apart, we lost almost half. In the early 2000s, Russian ports could handle only 300 million tonnes. Over the last 17 years, this figure has tripled. In early 2017, the aggregate port capacity in Russia exceeded 1 billion tonnes for the first time in history. As you can see from the charts, this exceeds the level reached by the Soviet Union by more than two thirds. By the way, these are the figures for early 2017, and the capacity currently stands at 1,025 billion tonnes.

We need to further expand this capacity, including by increasing the capacity of railway links to ports in the Azov and Black Sea basin 1.5-fold to 131 million tonnes.

The Northern Sea Route will be the key to developing the Russian Arctic and Far East. By 2025, cargo traffic along this route will surge tenfold to 80 million tonnes. Our goal is to make it a truly global and competitive transport route. Let me remind you that the Northern Sea Route was used more actively in Soviet times compared to how we have been using it so far. We will definitely develop this route and reach new horizons. I have no doubt about it.

We will continue our proactive policy to attract investment and create social and economic growth centres in Russia’s Far East. We will create all the conditions to ensure a people-friendly living environment, so that people move to this region and its population grows.

A number of large-scale industrial projects have been launched in the Arctic. They comply with the highest environmental standards. We are strengthening the research, transport, navigation and military infrastructure, which is expected to guarantee Russia’s interests in this strategic region. Russia builds cutting-edge nuclear icebreakers. We have had the most powerful icebreaker fleet in the world, and this will remain so...

The Spatial Development Strategy will serve as a foundation for preparing a comprehensive plan to modernise and expand the backbone traffic infrastructure. I believe this to be a priority for the future Government.

Russia must not just become the world’s key logistics and transport hub, but also, which is very important, a global centre for the storage, processing, transfer and reliable protection of large volumes of information, so-called big data.

Overall, infrastructure development must take into account global technological changes. In other words, the projects we are now considering must include practical solutions for combining infrastructure with drones and digital marine and air navigation, as well as use AI to streamline logistics.

Transcript of the Address to the Federal Assembly.