Putin: all officials should drive domestic cars

All Russian officials must drive domestically produced cars, declared Russian President Vladimir Putin at a meeting with heads of manufacturing enterprises.

“All officials of the country must drive domestic cars. Somewhere it will be more modest than before – it’s okay, on the contrary, it’s even good. All this wonderful bureaucracy should understand that we need to strive for the development of domestic brands, cars, and other products,” the president said.

The head of state added that he was approached by ministries and departments with a request to focus on the purchase of foreign cars, but he said that this should be “absolutely excluded.”

At the same time, Russia does not need to refuse imports, but “some basic things” should be focused on domestic producers, Putin believes.

In July, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin offeredso that all budgetary institutions and authorities must purchase domestic cars. Volodin called on the deputies to support the position of the Ministry of Finance, whose employees, by decision of Minister Anton Siluanov, will switch to Russian cars with a deep level of localization. The speaker stressed that the State Duma would also make such a decision.

He recalled that Putin uses a domestic car – “Aurus”. At the same time, Volodin added that localization should be taken into account, since “deep localization will allow us to create new enterprises that will work for assembly, for the conveyor.”

Siluanov during the SPIEF tested the domestic car Lada Aura. After that, he noted that the new AvtoVAZ model could replace foreign brands used by officials. At the same time, he noted that ministry employees are ready to change their official cars to Lada Aura.