Putin said that Russia is ceasing to be a gas station

Russia was first called a gas station country by US Republican Senator John McCain in 2014. Putin is confident that it is no longer possible to call Russia that way - it is turning into a self-sufficient country. On the territory of the Industrial Company Vtormet enterprise, the largest car recycling center in Russia

Russia is turning into a self-sufficient and sovereign country from a “gas station,” President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with the new composition of the Public Chamber of Russia. The speech was broadcast on the telegram channel of the presidential administration.

According to Putin, Russia is becoming a country whose economic structure is 43% occupied by processing production. “As we were once told, pointed with a finger, that we are a gas station, not an economy , when all this changes, when we become self-sufficient, then there will be fewer people who want to exclude us from some organizations,” the president said.

Putin emphasized that the stronger Russia is “economically, militarily, internally politically,” the less desire anyone will have to “exclude it from somewhere.” According to him, the more self-sufficiency Russia has, the more there will be “those willing to apologize and invite them to work together in a variety of areas of activity.”

In March 2022, Russia was expelled from the Council of Europe due to the launch of a military operation in Ukraine . At the same time , Moscow decided to withdraw from the Council of Europe even before the vote: Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov notified the organization’s Secretary General of this the day before the vote to exclude Russia. According to the head of the Russian delegation to PACE, Pyotr Tolstoy, Moscow decided to leave the organization “in the midst of another anti-Russian discussion.” He emphasized that Russia left the Council of Europe “of its own free will.”

On February 24, 2023, the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) suspended Russia's membership. Rosfinmonitoring called this decision political. Russia has participated in the FATF since 2003.

For the first time, Republican Senator John McCain called Russia a gas station country after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014. McCain died on August 25, 2018.

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On September 1, 2020, Putin recalled his words and stated that Russia, overcoming the COVID-19 pandemic , showed that it is not a “gas station country,” but a state with “pronounced new technological capabilities.”

In December 2020, Putin also said that Russia can no longer be considered a gas station country. Then he noted that 70% of the Russian budget is not formed from oil and gas revenues, and if someone wants to present Russia as a gas station, then this “no longer has any basis in reality.”

On August 19, 2023, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell said that the Russian economy is too small compared to the economies of the “real geopolitical players.” In this regard, in his opinion, Russia is “a gas station whose owner has an atomic bomb.”