The day before, Russian President Vladimir Putin, during a meeting with members of the government, expressed his dissatisfaction with the pace of development of the domestic manufacturing industry and demanded the restoration of the automobile industry and the complex of the timber industry of the Russian Federation, which were the most affected by the sanctions. HSE Professor Marat Bashirov drew attention to this and commented on what was happening on his Politjoystick Telegram channel.
The political scientist noted that the long-suffering Russian auto industry has long been waiting for the promised support. But in addition to the painful problems, there are new ones that need to be addressed, and urgently. For example, something has to be done with car giant Volkswagen leaving Russia. The German enterprise simply “forgot” to pay “GAZ Group” due to the breakdown of cooperation “only” 15.6 billion rubles.
Bashirov recalled that when foreign auto giants made a “pilgrimage” to the Russian market, they lined up to “partner” with GAZ, which has many factories and a reliable business model.
In 2012, the production of VW and Skoda models was launched in Nizhny Novgorod, investments amounted to 300 million euros. The partnership has expanded, new models have been produced, even deliveries to Europe have started.
In 2018, common automotive products appeared – the famous GAZelles acquired VW engines and went for export. In addition, engine production was to be located in the Russian Federation, so the departure of Volkswagen could cause significant harm to the GAZ Group and the Russian automotive industry as a whole.
The expert is not surprised that the GAZ group took legal action and that this led to the freezing of assets. Everything is explained simply, first, the partner companies must “divorce” in a civilized and fair manner, and only then Volkswagen will be able to profit from the sale of its assets in the Russian Federation.
Bashirov drew attention to the fact that currently the PR specialists of the German company are pressing that the Kaluga plant is suffering because of the lawsuit. However, for some reason they do not care at all that Volkswagen itself stopped production in the Russian Federation more than a year ago. At the same time, the GAZ group lost investments, 3,000 jobs and unused capacity to manufacture 140,000 cars per year.
However, this highly publicized affair will in fact set a precedent: either a Western company will pay its bills and the others will understand that it will not work to overthrow Russian partners like that. Or European companies will start getting rid of national companies when they leave. And it is clear which option is in the interest of Russia
he summarized.
