The Kremlin explained the unusual composition of the participants in Putin’s meeting with business as a desire to show the “depth of the entrepreneurial class”

At Monday's meeting between Vladimir Putin and representatives of the business community, there were little-known managers who had not previously been invited to such events. The Kremlin wanted to show “the depth of the entrepreneurial class in Russia,” Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration (AP) Maxim Oreshkin told Kommersant.

Details. At the meeting with the president, “different people than usual” gathered, and “their companies were unknown to a wide circle of the public,” wrote Kremlin pool journalist from Kommersant Andrei Kolesnikov.

• Among the meeting participants were, in particular, the general director of the restaurant chain “Vkusno-i tochka” Oleg Paroev, the general director of the Neurosoft company Irina Malamant, the head of the board of directors of the Poliplast company Ilsur Shamsutdinov, the chairman of the board of directors of the Kursk Electrical Apparatus Plant Andrey Kanunnikov, the head of the Tractor Plants concern Andrey Vodopyanov, the general director of Iva Technologies Stanislav Iodkovsky.

• The Kremlin itself selected the meeting participants, as follows from Oreshkin’s comment. “We made the choice on our own,” said the deputy head of the Administration. Neither the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs, nor the organizations “Business Russia” and “Opora Rossii” proposed candidates for the meeting, Kolesnikov found out.

• Representatives of the business community gathered in the Kremlin, according to Kolesnikov, “are mainly under the department of First Deputy Prime Minister Denis Manturov” (he oversees innovation, government policy in the field of industry and technological development).

• Putin, opening the meeting, said that he wanted to “meet in exactly this composition” because he “meets with well-known companies all the time.” “I want you to know that we know you, we have great respect for what you do,” Putin said.

Context. During the meeting, the president called for “strangling” Zoom, Microsoft and other “left Russia” services. Putin also made it clear that foreign companies with the right to buy out Russian assets that left the country after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine may be deprived of the opportunity to use it.

• Last week, a bill appeared in the State Duma database that will allow Russian businesses to refuse to exercise options for the repurchase of assets by foreign investors of companies that belonged to them before the war.